Page 30 of If I See You Again
That year hadn’t been all that happy either… the one before that as well. Maybe we’d all just put on a good face and tried pretending our entire world wasn’t falling apart. In our heads, we wanted to look back and only remember the good times, but I knew the truth. The dark lurked around every corner. Mom and Dad hadn’t noticed the weight loss. How Marcus had seemed so damn tired all the time, but I’d seen it all. I’d felt it all.
“Malcolm?”
I startled at my name, turning wide eyes to David. “I’m sorry, what?”
His smile was weak. “You sort of just zoned out there. Did you want to get dressed and go for a walk or something?”
It was the best suggestion he’d had all morning. There was a reason I’d been avoiding spending too much time at my parents’ house. Too many memories haunted it. The reality was, I was on my own without my brother for the rest of my life.
Chapter 22
David
Getting out of the house seemed to be the right call. While Malcolm seemed to still be a bit on the morose side, he didn’t seem quite as out of it after his father had brought up the year his brother died. Or that’s what I assumed he’d been alluding to, anyway.
Taking a chance, I weaved my fingers with Malcolm’s. When he held my hand back, not resisting me, something in my chest unwound. It felt right.
The air was still crisp, filled with dew from the early morning fog. We kept walking in silence until I couldn’t handle it anymore. “Is it too hard to be here?”
Malcolm sighed, slowing his pace, before turning and giving me a sad smile. “Most times. But it’s also good. I can’t keep avoiding it. Marcus wouldn’t have wanted that. He would have wanted us to move on with our lives and to keep living for him. Maybe it’s because we were twins, but I’ve never quite felt whole since he died…”
I stopped walking, pulling him close and wrapping my arms around him. We stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, notcaring that this was his childhood neighborhood or if people could see us. Everything about this man fit with me, and I was terrified that this was still temporary. That the second we made it back to Chicago, he’d yank it all away again. I wanted something real. I wantedhim.
“I’ve never experienced something like that. I can’t imagine what it feels like, but I can tell you I want to do my best to fill those empty places in your life. Let me be what makes you feel whole again.”
The longer we stood there, the less unsure I felt about putting my heart on the line. Was he letting me in? Was he going to give it a real chance?
But my growing certainty was soon snuffed out the second he pulled away without acknowledging what I’d said. Malcolm’s hand slipped from mine as he turned to walk again, but I wasn’t going to let it slide. There was no way. We needed to address this because I couldn’t continue to let him walk all over my feelings.
“Malcolm.”
He stopped and when he looked at me again, his stunning green eyes were filled with tears.
“You don’t seem to understand—”
“What do you think I don’t understand?”
Malcolm sighed, threading his fingers through his hair and pulling at the strands. “As much as I want to give in, and trust me when I say I do, but it’s not that easy. I’ve already told you I’m scared.”
“But itisthat easy. Let me take care of you.”
He shook his head, a small laugh leaving his lips. “David, I don’t need someone to take care of me. I’ve been taking care of myself my whole adult life. You’re sort of forced to when everything falls apart.”
This was a disaster. It wasn’t what I’d intended by getting him out of the house. I wanted him to know that it was okay to lean on someone else.
“Malcolm, would you just stop?”
“I appreciate it, David. I do. Being here with you has helped. It doesn’t feel quite as suffocating, but I couldn’t even tell my mother that it killed me to be kicked out of the damn kitchen this morning.”
We stood in an awkward sort of standoff for a moment. “Why couldn’t you tell her that?”
“Because that’s how she deals with it. On the outside, we look fine. She invites all these people over and puts on this show, like we’re the perfect, happy family. But no, we’re not. We shattered the second they put Marcus in the ground.”
The unsettling quiet surrounded us again. The only thing that broke it up was the wind rustling the leaves in the tree, breaking them free, and sending them to the ground. It was a strange metaphor for what we were talking about. The cycle of life and death was often cruel and made little sense. No one should have had to experience it the way Malcolm’s family had.
“So what happens now? You clearly don’t want to spend the rest of your life alone, or you wouldn’t have been trying to date. Were you trying to sabotage things by telling them about your brother?”
Malcolm’s eyes widened, like I’d hit a sore spot.
