Page 9 of Love Bites
Still, I couldn't stop myself from stacking four of Dad's notebooks on his desk. If I looked through these…
I stopped when I spotted a red gem out of the corner of my eyes. The 'blood crystal' that sat on the shelf behind the desk. It had been one of Dad's most prized possessions. I was never allowed to touch it, no matter how much I wanted to. I remembered my child-self staring at it greedily. It had always shone so brightly, as if it were really magic.
Now, sitting there on the shelf, it looked disappointingly dull and mundane and I wondered if maybe the shine had been all in my head.
"What are you doing?"
I nearly flinched, so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn't noticed Remy enter the room.
"Nothing," I said quickly, in spite of being caught red-handed with Dad's journals stacked in front of me.
Remy shot me a doubtful look and then took another step into the room, closing the door behind him. "How long are you planning on running from this?" he asked.
"What?"
He gestured at the notebooks. "You're obviously still upset about that fight you had with Dad or you wouldn't be acting so strangely. Last night, and now this... And your refusing to come here for ayear... Something's going on with you and I think the anniversary is stressing you out."
I cringed as he reminded me of the fight. One week before Dad's passing, I'd come out to him.
Suffice to say it hadn't gone well.
"I know you don't like to talk about it," Remy continued when I didn't say anything, "but honestly, it's getting a little ridiculous. I'm sure that panic attack yesterday didn't come out of nowhere."
No, it had come out of meeting a vampire, but I didn't say that. My brother wouldn't have believed me anyway. Hell, I wouldn't have believed me two days ago.
But there had been a time in our lives when we'd felt different. "Remember when we practiced how to protect ourselves against vampires and monsters?" I asked. Dad had never said anything about monsters, but since vampires existed, we had simply assumed that monsters did too. Remy and I would play out in the yard and one of us would be the monster or vampire and one of us would be the 'victim'. Sometimes Elena, Luke and Jared would join too.
"Sure I remember." A soft smile showed on my brother's face. "I also remember how much we got teased at school for believing all of Dad's stories." He laughed. "He had some crazy stories, didn't he?"
"He sure did..." I couldn't quite get my voice to sound as nostalgic as Remy's did. To him, this was just a fond memory of the man who'd done his best to raise him in spite of all his eccentricities. He hadn't fought with Dad the way I had, and he hadn't seen what I had either.
If I'd seen anything at all. The more time passed between my encounter with the stranger at the club and the higher the sun rose in the sky, the more impossible it all seemed. Like a bad dream I was waking up from.
"What was your fight about, anyway?" Remy tried, leaning on the desk as if he wanted to appear as casual as possible.
One finger went into my hair where I could still feel some glitter clinging to it. "What do you think we fought about?" I'd never spelled this out for my siblings, but I'd never made much of a secret of it either, and really, wasn't it obvious?
Remy's forehead wrinkled. "Don't tell me he didn't know you were..." He gestured with his hand.
"Gay, Remy. It's a word, not an insult. You can say it."
"Sorry. You know I don't have a problem with your being... gay."
I shrugged. Remy still stumbled a bit over that word, but that was okay. I didn't need my siblings to throw on rainbow t-shirts and join the next pride parade. After the way Dad had reacted—as if it was the end of the world if one of his sons liked other boys—unspoken acceptance from everyone else was enough for me.
"I'm sorry Dad acted like an ass," Remy said as if it was his fault.
I shrugged again, trying hard to make it seem like I was over it all. "He's not the first parent ever to freak out." What I didn't say was that I would have appreciated being able to stay mad at him for longer than a week before the grief of losing him entirely tore into me. With enough time, we might have been able to overcome this shit, but as it was...
"I think you need some closure," Remy said. "You should come to the cemetery with us."
"Closure?"
"Yeah. I mean, you weren't at the funeral and..." Remy trailed off, his gaze sweeping the notebooks between us. He thought my behavior was unhealthy. He was probably right. Maybe I was making things up in my head from the stress of the recent days—from the stress of trying not to think about Dad's death.
Maybe what I needed to do was to face it head on and then I would stop seeing things that couldn't exist.
"All right, I'll come with you, but then you have to leave me alone after."
