My voice is up by the time I’m done, and I feel bad for the dog in Jack’s arms. But she barely blinks, just keeps sniffing the air as though she knows she’s home, and I find as much comfort in that as she does.
Jack scratches her ears, taking a breath. Eyes on me, silently encouraging me to do the same. “Come inside,” he says when he’s satisfied with the oxygen in my lungs. “Faffin’ out here isn’t going to fix anything.”
Him or me, I’m not sure. But I stash Sol’s keys and follow Jack inside.
The pub’s busy, loud with the raucous beat of a shanty-punk band. They have an accordion, which puts Skylar on my mind again. I’ve seen how he rolls his eyes every time that shit starts up, but I guess he’s never really been off it.
Jack goes straight upstairs, taking the dog with him. I duck behind the bar to trail him there too, but Sol intercepts me. Unlike Jack, he doesn’t ask where I’ve been or who I’ve killed. Or even why there’s a dog in his house.
He just hugs me. “I’ve got the bar. Try and get your brother to rest, will ya? He’s been awake too long.”
I nod and keep moving, and by the time I make it upstairs, Jack has loaded a plate for me. I don’t have the heart to tell him I don’t need any more food. So I eat it standing at the kitchen counter while he puts water down for the dog and starts writing a list of who the fuck knows what. “What’s that?”
“Things she needs. Thingsyouneed.”
“Short list then.”
Jack scribbles something else. Then he fixes me with another long gaze that pins me in place. “Why don’t you tell me what to put on it then?”
“Jack, I don’t need anything.”
“You only say my name when you’re lying.”
He’s not wrong. But the things I need aren’t here right now, and there’s nothing he can do to fix that—to fixme—that he hasn’t already tried.
“I’ll come with you.” I speak without true thought. “To that place for fucked-up heads. Can’t make it worse, eh?”
Jack puts his pencil down. Carefully. Like he wants to throw it. That measured breath comes again, before he gets up and comes to where I still loiter by the sink.
He hugs me like Sol did. Except it’s different with my brother, because we’ve never done it that much, and for a horrifying moment, I think I might fucking cry.
For what, I don’t know. And I don’t try that hard to find out. I just lean on Jack and think about sleeping, and calling Skylar back. Of pinching Sol’s shit-heap car again and driving to the hospital to find him. Because I need him. And because the longer we’re apart, the surer I am that he needs me too.
You got receipts for that? Or you just making shit up at this point?
Eh.
It’s a warm night. Humid, air alive with the buzz of the incoming storm. Jack’s done parenting me. He takes the dog for a walk, and I watch from the kitchen window as she trots beside him on the beach and he doesn’t look back even once. Then I watch from the doorway as he brings her home. Feeds her. Bathes her. It’s last orders by the time he remembers to give a shit about running the pub.
It leaves me with the dog again. She hops on the couch and goes to sleep. I pace around. Go to Skylar’s room and stare at his ruined bed like it means something.
Like I’mmissingsomething.
I don’t call him again.
Eventually, after texting Moth back for the first time in months, I pass out on the couch, and I wake in that dead zone where the dark has thinned, but there’s still no light, and the quiet is too dense to be truly silent. The hour where wars shift, and dawn comes to a world that doesn’t fit the mould of the day before.
I sit up as security system alerts light up the control panel in the wall and a key crunches in the front door. The dog isn’t here anymore, and I know without checking that she’s gone to Jack.
Don’t blame her.
An errant thought as the front door opens and closes. My only thought as the old Vans Skylar wears to work make no sound on the hard wood floors, and it fizzles out as I feel him draw nearer. As I see him for the first time in what feels like years.
He stops in the living room doorway, and we stare at each other in the murky light as his smoke and metal gaze takes me in.
“You came back.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “You thought I wouldn’t?”