Page 43 of Maybe
The skin of my cheeks pinked. “Maybe,” I grumped, and he smiled at our old joke.
“I haven’t really played the guitar since you left home,” Isaac volunteered. He sat on the sofa opposite with his legs tucked under him. “I don’t think I can remember a single chord now.”
“Why?” I asked. “No time?”
“Partly. And partly because playing it reminded me too much of you and that you weren’t around anymore. I switch stations when the songs you used to sing and practice over and over come on the radio; I can’t bear listening to them. Not just because they remind me you left. They remind me of other things I don’t want to remember too.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I dunno.” He ran a hand through his damp hair. “The bad times, I suppose? Like how we made ourselves scarce when Dad came home jetlagged from one of his trips and threw his weight around, making snide comments to my mum. Trying to provoke her into snapping. Criticising everything she said and did, just to get a rise from her. And how, because she wanted to keep him happy, she took it out on you.”
For goodness’ sake, Ezra, can’t you see your father’s had the devil of a journey? Switch off that bloody music. Put someone else first, for once.
I blew out a long breath. So Isaac felt it too. The quiet dread settling deep in my bowels whenever our father’s key sounded in the lock and he dropped his bags in the hallway. The dull thud of them hitting the tiles. How, until we’d gauged his mood, we tiptoed around him on eggshells. Because when a challenging operation went well, or when the chief minister of wherever sang his praises for gifting a pile of obsolete ECG machines to a deprived kid’s ward, we’d get a reprieve. He’d produce something expensive and sparkly for Janice, picked up last minute at the airport, and they’d have an early night.
I said nothing as Isaac sadly shook his head.
“And the stupid thing is,” he carried on, watery-eyed, “I was never the target of any of his crap. Not like you. You bore the brunt of it. I just had to suck up the nagging and the pressure to perform, and the perennial feeling I wasn’t quite good enough. And yet,” his voice cracked, “here’s me, the one that got the money, the flat, and the safe, secure medical career, and I’m barely holding it together.”
“Yeah.” I should have contradicted him, told him he was doing just fine. But everything he said rang true. Somewhere along the way—perhaps the unexpected gift of Jonty and the joy he instilled in me—I’d escaped. Carly once pointed out, in herown inimitable blunt fashion, I didn’t need to ever look back again. I already knew what was behind, so I should concentrate on the future. On Jonty, mainly. She’d been right. I hadn’t looked back in years, not until our father’s death brought it all bubbling to the surface.
“Hey.” Isaac had fallen quiet, unchecked tears trickled down his cheeks. “Isaac, babe. Listen. When Henry Fitz-Henry died, we sold our entire childhood as a job lot, okay? And that wretched past you’re talking about? We don’t live there anymore, and we never have to go back. And you need to believe it.”
In the ensuing silence, I looked around. An uninvited guest, an anachronism in Isaac’s smart flat surrounded by his smart things. I should have left after dinner, perhaps, but he hadn’t kicked me out. And somehow, I didn’t feel I was supposed to go. This conversation needed to happen before either of us could properly move forwards.
“Hey.” I fished out a tissue. “Take this. Dry your eyes. He’s not worth your tears, none of that crap is.”
Isaac’s bland, tan-coloured sofa wouldn’t have looked out of place in an advert for a retirement village. Jonty and Freya would destroy its pristine fabric within about five minutes of bouncing around on it. And then make inroads into ruining the cream hearth rug.
Whereas Isaac barely made an impression on them—on anything in the entire room, except for me. I drank him in. My brother, my soulmate. A man I knew I’d never stopped loving and, with the exception of my own son, would love more than I would ever love anyone else. And he was miserable.
Sometimes, only a brotherly hug would do.
I made myself comfy next to him and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “I’ll go back to my own side of the room ifthis isn't okay. Or I’ll leave. I’m not trying to make a move on you or anything.”
“It’s fine.”
I pretended to be affronted. “Just fine?”
“Obviously not.” He elbowed me hard.
“Listen, I want you to be happy, Isaac. If that requires my absence from your life, then so be it.” Even saying the words was like stabbing red hot pokers in my eyes. “I hope you could still like me, though.”
His response was a sigh and a softening of his limbs. His hand left his lap to find one of mine. “Of course I don’t want you to go. I’ve only just got you back. I want to get to know you. Jonty, too. I want to be an uncle to him. But…” He brushed away a tear. “The other night, when you… you kissed me, it’s not that I didn’t like it—though I never in a million years expected it. You’re, like, smart and funny and… and everything. But all I could think was that I would lose you. As my brother. Because I don’t know if someone can still be a brother and… date or whatever. Or whether I could live with being someone you once fucked on your night off from childcare. If I recall correctly, that is the extent of your relationships.”
“Not with you. It wouldn’t be that way with you.” What had I been thinking, telling him that? Trying to impress him or shock him. Anything to mask the raw jumble of feelings seeing him again had on me. “I couldn’t, wouldn’t ever do that with you, Isaac.”
He side-eyed me, suspiciously. “How do I know you don’t trot that line out to everyone?”
“I don’t, I swear.”
“But can you see how I’d have a hard time believing that? Even if I manage to get my head around the whole ‘you’re my brother’thing, don’t you think it might ruin the whole ‘butyou’re still my brother’thing if our non-brotherly dating fell apart?”
Short of picking up my guitar and becoming the Rick Astley of lovers—I hated that bloody ubiquitous song, even though the irksome lyrics encapsulated everything I wanted to impress upon him—how else could I sway him to give us a shot? To take a chance on us?
I’m never gonna give you up.I began humming the opening bars. At least he laughed when he clocked what it was.
Unfortunately, even Rick’s cheesy declarations of love couldn’t convince him. “Okay then. How about this scenario? What if we, I dunno, have a… a sexual relationship and then, for whatever reason, you decide it’s not for you? You move onto someone better?”
