Page 80 of My Lovely Tragedy
My lips twitch. “I would never expect you to. Again, please.”
My eyes close softly as Brooklyn plays that incessant song over and over until I’m sure his ears are bleeding. “Did you sing this song as a child? Is that why you learned it?” I ask.
He snorts. “Nah. It was just easy to learn on my own.”
“What songs did you like as a child?”
He never falters, which I give him silent praise for. “I don’t know. I listened to a lot of 70s and 80s rock, I guess. Courtesy of my dad. My mom was big on Dolly Parton and Tanya Tucker and shit.”
My brows hit my hairline. “That’s… an interesting amalgamation.” He snorts and stops. Rolls his shoulders.
“What’s interesting is two people who absolutely hate each other having kids in an attempt to salvage something that never should’ve been.”
“Darling—”
“Don’t say anything. I shouldn’t have said that.” I massage his shoulders until his head falls against my right hand, pinning me in place.
“It sounds like that must have been very difficult to survive.” He stiffens and sits straighter, but he doesn’t turn around. I wish I could see more over the top of his head, but I settle for the sharp slope of his nose, his beard, and his hands lying limply atop his thighs.
“Survive,” he repeats, then shakes his head with a soft huff. “No one’s ever said that before. But yeah, surviving was all there really was. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I know it could’ve been a lot worse. They weren’t addicts, weren’t physically abusive—to me and Bobby, anyway. But fuck, just being around them… The things they’d say…” He shakes his head, sending strands whipping across my face.
I drag my palm up to his nape and hold him steady. Letting him breathe.
“Bobby?” I coax after a long bout of silence.
“My older sister. Parents had her as an initial attempt to… I don’t even fucking know. But I was the fix-it baby, eleven years later. Except I didn’t fix shit.” He inhales sharply. “Bobby used to tell me how much worse it got once they brought me home. Mom had a c-section, and I guess she was hell to deal with. Dad was gone, working as much as he could, so Bobby ended up caring for me more often than not.
“Mom never really got out of bed again. I guess after me, she kind of got worse. Her depression, I mean.” My darling crow chokes on the words. Tries to cover them up with a raspy cough.
“Guess I got that from her. But Bobby—she got the running away from Dad. That’s what they’re both good at. Running when shit gets tough, coming back only when you beg. But Bobby never did. The day she turned eighteen—actually, it was the minute. Midnight on the dot. I watched her walk out the door with two trash bags filled with shit, and I never saw her again.
“She calls sometimes. Every few years to remind me she even exists, to pretend she’s checking in, but I haven’t seen her face since I was seven. I barely remember what she looks like.”
I press my lips to the crown of his head, leaning into him until he leans back against me, pushing against the pressure. A push and pull. A war between need and want. I linger there, inhaling his scent. Clutching his biceps. Skin against skin.
“And, in spite of it all, look at the marvelous boy you have become. You’re talented and successful. Beyond intelligent and so,sobeautiful.” I drag my mouth over his head, catching hairs, but I don’t care.
Brooklyn huffs indignantly but eases a little more into me. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You have made your own success, your own family—without them. That is wholly you, darling. You should be proud of that.”
“Proud that I struggle with the same shit Mom dies a little more from every day with Dad well on his way, too? That my own sister walked away from me—left me in that fuckinghell—and never looked back? That, even as I hate them with every fucking atom in my body, I still send them money every month because if I don’t, they’d die a lot sooner, and I’m too fucking selfish to let them? I’d rather be poor with parents than rich and alone.” His chest is heaving, and I don’t have to see his face to know there are tears streaking their way down, over his plump, pink lips, sneaking into the small cracks. Through his beard and down his neck. Salty paths I wish to taste.
“I’ve been here longer than a month, haven’t I?” he whispers after a long moment, voice weak and soft.Broken.
I round the bench to sit beside him. My arm snakes around his waist, and he falls effortlessly into me, his nose finding solace against my neck, as it always does, lips grazing over my stubble. “Yes,corvus.”
“How long?”
“Six weeks.”
He nods shakily, accepting, even as his heart shatters a little more. I soothe him with gentle brushes of my lips and soft praises.
“Thank you for telling me. It means so much,” I whisper to him.
He pushes away from me while dragging his hands over his eyes, dispersing tears. Rubbing his cheeks red. Eyes swollen and glistening.
“Why not tell you all my deep, dark tragedies? I haven’t got anything left to lose. You’ve taken all the rest.”
