Page 59 of Bitter Lies

“Don’t look at her!” Max screams, making me jump out of my chair. “This isn’t about her!”

Griffin smiles but his eyes are pools of caution. “Okay, Max. What the fuck is going on?”

“Nothing! Nothing is going on. I was having a conversation with my sister. Do you fucking mind?”

Griffin drops his hand, cringing away before turning to me with an assessing look.

Wiping my eyes, I stand from my seat carefully and say, “Max, maybe we can help. Maybe—”

“Fuck you! I fucking hate you! Don’t you get it? You have everything, and I have fucking nothing.” Helplessly, I watch as my brother rages confused by where this is coming from and why it’s directed at me.

“Enough,” I mutter, annoyed by his self-serving fucking pity. “I don’t have everything. I get that you’re upset, but fuck, Max, we all have a fucking cross to bear.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s your fucking cross?” he sneers.

Refusing to look Griffin’s way, I rub my aching forehead, wishing for a fucking break. “Bad decisions and a fucking reputation as crazy train.”

He stares at me stupidly for a moment before he laughs, which turns to a sob, and stepping forward, I place my hand on his arm, but he pulls away roughly and walks to his room, slamming the door behind him.

Staring after him, I drop my hand to my side and sigh, ashamed that in his most vulnerable moment, I couldn’t be genuine with him. But my torment is dug so deep that I’m afraid to speak it out loud for fear it will pull me under again.

“What was that about?” Griff asks gruffly.

Turning to Griffin with a sad smile, I say the only damn thing I can in this house of paper cards, wishing, for once, I could see past the mask. “Secrets and lies.”

And then I follow my brother from the room and lock myself inside my own, listening to the sound of the fan over my bed until I pass into sleep.

Chapter Sixteen

Pain doesn’t make the ugly go away—nothing does.

Before Griffin came along, Max and I were inseparable, the dynamic duo, or so our parents called us. We shared everything and had no secrets from each other, and over the next few weeks, I wonder if Griffin’s arrival wasn’t the catalyst for our fallout. We both gravitated toward his brilliance, and maybe somewhere along the way, we lost who we were and the connection that once ran so deep.

To my dismay, I realize that maybe I let him down because with Griffin in the picture, Max became second in my life, and all these years later, I know the pain of being dropped and left out in the cold.

I don’t know what to do about it now, though, and I fear it’s too late because Max holds a lot of resentment in his heart, and right or wrong, it’s festering within him.

It’s the week of Thanksgiving, and I’ve avoided any and all interaction with the guys, which is no easy feat, but when they’re home, I go out, wandering the campus or hitting up the library.

It’s been horribly tense as it is because Max refuses to speak to either of us, and the one time I overheard Griffin trying to talk to Max, he raged at him before leaving the house altogether.

This weekend I plan to put my foot down about my living arrangements, and if I have to, I’ll fucking blackmail Max into backing me up.

He’s been primarily sullen and quiet, giving me sad eyes when we accidentally meet in the hall, which I ignore. I love him, I do. Maybe I let him down, and I also see he’s in pain, but I’m in fucking pain too, and I’m tired of being the enemy.

I could’ve used my brother’s support after I ended up in a mental hospital or when the jerk’s spread ugly rumors about me, but he hasn’t so much as sought me out to make amends, not even for threatening to hurt me physically.

Or to even so much as to fucking say he’s sorry beyond a half-hearted apology followed by crazy shit.

And I’m tired of being the enemy. I’m fucking exhausted. I’m done.

As for Griffin, he’s no better because he bargained my virginity away for the price of a pair of shoes he could have bought anyway. And somehow, I’m still the bad guy, the liar, the fucking catch-all for his rage and cruelty.

In the weeks since the incident with Max and Griffin’s revelations, while locked away in my room, I’ve completed the painting on the wall, where I added new imagery depicting that same withered tree, but with a girl who looks like me, holding out a rotten apple to a boy with hazel eyes, who offers me a key.

But the key fits a dead and dried husk of a heart he holds in his other hand, a gaping hole in his chest where it used to reside.

Maybe it’s this final fuck-you that I needed, but I’ve pulled out my pencils and started drawing again. Unfortunately, the images are macabre depictions of death and suffering, but it’s a start, and even my counselor has agreed.

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