Page 25 of For Your Heart
No matter what I do, no matter how much time goes by, nothing changes. Sometimes I forget when I walk in our front door and look for Simon. Occasionally my mind plays tricks on me, and I’m sure I catch a whiff of him in bed. Sometimes I can pretend that he’s in the kitchen, rummaging around in the fridge.
The way I can’t catch my breath after is a bit alarming. It’s like my body forgets how to breathe and there’s a moment of panic that I think I might die.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
Declan sighs. “Wilder’s. Gay bar down the road. Want to come?”
I consider it. Really, I do. We could hook up easily. Twins dancing together always gathers attention. But that feels like far too much energy.
Shaking my head, I say, “No. Have fun.”
He nods but doesn’t move. Just as my mind starts to wonder and I think he’s changed his mind, Declan pulls away from me. There’s a brief moment where I want to pull him back and ask him to stay. He would. Just like I would go if he really wanted me to.
Declan pauses, waiting for me to ask. He looks at me, studies my face. I wave him off. “Go. Or I will change my mind.”
The smile he gives me isn’t real in the least. I listen to him move around our room, into the closet to change. At the door as he slips into his shoes. The door opens and closes.
Silence falls around me. Gripping the blanket in my fists, I squeeze my eyes closed and try to clear everything. No anger. No sadness. No loneliness.
When I can’t take the silence any longer, I grab my phone and pull up the streaming app. Because I have no self-control, I log into the settings to see when the last time Simon’s logged in. My stomach falls when I see he hasn’t in months. Many months.
Why does that bother me? Why do I even care? It’s just mindless shows.
Because I am feeling a little stalkery and possessive, I start systematically going through all of Simon’s logins. His credit card has a recent fuel charge of $38.02. He couldn’t get the even number at the pump. There’s already a pending payment to clear the charge.
But when I click on it, I see it’s from an unknown bank number. He opened a new account?
A sick feeling forms in my stomach as I open the bank app and sign in, my heart pounding as the circle spins. Did he change his login? He changed banks entirely, right? He needed to erase us from his life.
But it opens and I almost let out a sob. There’s almost $30,000 in his account. I click on the activity to see that he rarely has any money going out, only deposits. The last one from Stommer was July 1. Every week since then, he’s had a deposit of $653.12.
That’s not a huge amount. What did he tell us he was hired at? $40,000 a year? Is that worth being the manager of a bookstore? I suppose if it’s your first job ever, that’s not a bad deal, right?
I sign out and stop snooping. Going back to the streaming app, I scroll until I find something mundane to watch. It’s not meant to keep my attention, so my mind rolls lazily through nothing as my eyes train on the television.
Simon is doing fine without us. He doesn’t need us. That hurts, maybe worse than anything.
While I’m wondering what he’s doing right now, I feel a moment of bright, hot panic race through me and I sit upright, my tablet falling to the floor with athud.My vision loses focus as I gasp for breath, my mind going haywire with fear.
No condom. I haven’t been using a condom. What the fuck am I doing? What am I—
Wait. I have been using a condom. There hasn’t… oh.
Declan!
Silence and then he’s breathing easier again. Jesus, this man is going to give me a heart attack.
“Clean.”
“Fuck’s sake,” I mutter and reach for the tablet. Thankfully, the rubber case around it kept it from cracking. Settling back in, I’m monitoring my brother instead of thinking about Simon. That’s a bit of an improvement, right?
I mean, I’d kept myself as checked out with him as I could because I knew he was going to hookup and I’m not in the mood to get hard right now. But fuck, no condom? What’s he trying to do here? This is a new kind of reckless.
“Sorry.”
I humph and stare at the screen. That’s where I remain for the rest of the night. Keeping an eye on my brother and watching the figures move on whatever show this is.
Declan gets home close to midnight. He strips, showers, and climbs into bed, curling up against my back. We lay in silence, with the only sound being the show I put on.
