Page 79 of For Your Heart
“Our bed,” Declan and I say together. Simon looks between the two of us. “It’s always going to be our bed. The three of us. Always.”
He smiles. “You know, I still want the future we’ve always planned.” His voice is quiet, almost sad. “I want a house and kids and vacations and all that. But I want that with Quin too. I don’t know how to have both. I don’t even know that I should want both. Is that how friends are supposed to feel about each other? Is this the kind of future they’re supposed to want? I don’t think this is supposed to directly compete with a future with a partner or impact those future plans. It shouldn’t be taken into consideration when we talk about the future. So why does it?”
I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a heart attack. The emotions he has made run wild inside me are giving me palpitations. I thought that future was erased. I thought it was no more, and we were on borrowed time until he was ready to leave us permanently to be with Stommer.
He just lit that up in technicolor. I can see it all. But it’s no longer simple to just say, yes, let’s do that. I understand his confusion.
I want Sage too. I want to give him everything I want to give Simon. How the fuck do I make this work?
The turmoil in Declan’s eyes matches mine. For the first time in a long time, the three of us are on exactly the same page. Same line. Same word. Fuck, the same syllable.
There’s no answer in sight.
Twenty-Five
DAMON
“You sure about this?”Dad asks.
Declan and I don’t even look at each other. We’re so fucking tired. That happens when you don’t sleep for two nights in a row. Why didn’t we sleep? Because our bed felt empty without Simon. Even as we curled around each other, the weird feeling like there was something empty, hollow, screaming at us to fix it, just wouldn’t go away.
His dreams kept waking me. And then when he finally woke up and I could fall asleep, my dreams kept him awake. It’s not like we’re not used to sharing dreams. Talk about a freaky twin thing. That one probably takes the cake. But fuck’s sake, did it make for a long night.
We’re sitting at the side of our bed, folding the massive mound of laundry that we pulled from the two dressers—ours and Simons. We’ve had two dressers for four years and Simon has pretty much outright ignored his in favor of ours. I’m not sure he’s worn anything from his own since he moved in.
As I hold up a pair of shorts that are a kids size twelve, that only further proves that this is a good idea. I toss them on the increasingly growing pile of donation clothes. Our closet is next.
“Yeah,” I say. “We don’t use two, so we should just get rid of one.”
It’s not that we were getting rid of one. We were getting rid of both of them in favor of a single one slightly bigger. This isn’t something we discussed with Simon. If we had, he’d have just shrugged.
When his grandparents on his mother’s side contacted our parents to take Simon for the weekend, we had the idea to redo our entire room. Let it grow up a little, and surprise Simon in the process. Our parents were on board with it considering we hadn’t asked for anything new in years. So many years.
As far as furniture went, anyway.
It was tricky hiding all the new boxes of furniture that came in, but we have a large garage that Simon, Declan, and I rarely have reason to go in. So besides an afternoon delivery every now and then that we had to distract Simon from, it wasn’t too difficult.
Our parents tried to talk us into two beds at least. Or letting Simon have his own room. The panic that spiked through us must have been visible to our mom and she raised her hands. “You can have a little space, you know,” she said. “You’re growing up. It’s alright to have separate rooms.”
We’d known from a young age that the second room was for the two of us to split into when we got older. When we took Simon in, it was for Simon when he was ready for his own space. Our parents just didn’t understand that we liked being on top of each other all the time. We constantlyneededto be touching and in contact.
Like right now, as my brother and I fold laundry, our ankles are linked together where they hang off the bed. It’s that little bit of contact that just makes us feel right.
Except we’re a little wild inside without Simon. Two fucking days! Two really long nights! Thankfully, he’ll be home in a few hours.
We already have the two desks set up by the window and the new bed. Because we chose two desks, we weren’t able to fit in a larger bed. Something my mother thought was necessary more than we did. Honestly, it didn’t even occur to us to want a bigger bed. We were relieved when we couldn’t fit it after choosing two desks.
Our argument of needing somewhere to do our schoolwork outweighed the need for a bigger bed, worked. While we got a new mattress and frame, it was still a full-sized bed as opposed to the queen she wanted.
The argument that we didn’t need bunk beds had been a struggle too. The fact that we were adamant that we werenevergoing to use the second bunk and therefore it was a waste of money and space really had to be driven home.
In the end, it was our father who came through as our support. “It’s their room, dearest. If they decide they need more room later, we’ll expand into the second bedroom. But for now, this is what they want.”
Our parents weren’t usually on the ‘your closeness is inappropriate for your age’ train, but as the three of us grew older, it became more obvious in the way our mother watched us with concern that she was growing worried. We weren’t going to encourage a conversation, though. When she came to us, we were ready to defend our relationship to our mother if need be.
The bag of old clothes went with my father as my brother and I began loading the drawers with the clothes we were keeping. There was very little from Simon’s dresser that even fit us anymore. But we’d also gotten new clothes when mom saw how much we were getting rid of. Especially when she realized that the reason we were getting rid of it was because we outgrew it.
Now we had a new wardrobe as well, all neatly folded in the basket mom dropped off as she helped dad carry down what we were donating. Silently, tiredly, we continued filling our drawers. One with shorts. Two filled with pants. One with short-sleeved shirts. Another with long-sleeved shirts. One with pajama bottoms and sleep shirts—something we never wore, but mom insisted we have, anyway. And the top two were for underwear and socks.
