Shadows on the right.
Weakness on the left.
Some days I remember all the medical jargon that explains it. Most days I don’t give a shit. I am what I am. And whatever’s happened to me, I can still hear a fly sneeze on the other side of the world. Can still assign footsteps to the individual before they come up on me. Or maybe my heart just knows it isn’t Sol.
Blond hair appears in my peripheral. Skin stained with more ink than me and Sol combined. Eyes like the pewter dish in my room. Skylar leans in the doorway, appraising me with more subtlety than my brother can ever manage. “Spring cleaning?”
“It’s winter.”
“Right. And Sol already sorted the beer delivery this morning. He do it wrong?”
I shrug. “Maybe. What do you think?”
Skylar snorts. “All looks the same to me. Did you eat dinner?”
“Aye. Did you?”
A question I wouldn’t usually ask, but if Skylar’s come down here to check up on me, he can take his own medicine.
Or deflect me. Which is all the answer I need, before he thrusts a crumpled paper bag at me and I forget I ever asked. There’s money in the bag, spilling out in battered and scrunched up notes. About a grand, maybe. A little less, a little more. “What’s this?”
“Yours, apparently. It was in the microwave, so I swiped it before Mal saw it and here we are.” Skylar’s lips upturn in a dry half-smile. “Unless you want to talk to him about it?”
“Fuck, no.” I set a barrel down and eye the money, ignoring the bite mark on Skylar’s neck and the royal mess my brother’s made of his hair. “I don’t need that aggravation in my life.”
“He could help.”
“All I need is Sol to stop bankrupting himself to pay a debt I don’t care about.”
“Mal might’ve better luck persuading him than you’ve had.”
“No, he’ll just be ruder about it and make Sol upset. I don’t want that.”
“What do you want, then? I’ve been banking this cash for you ever since I caught you with a pile of it under your mattress, and I’ll do it forever if that’s what you want, but I don’t feel like it is.”
It isn’t. I want Sol to keep his hard-earned money and stop worrying about the chunk I gave his mum a hundred years ago. It wasn’t a loan. Even if Skylar wasn’t my witness, Irememberpulling those funds and handing my best friend an envelope that made him cry. I always remember Sol’s tears. Probably because it’s been a lifetime since I made him laugh.
A hand lands on my shoulder. Not warm like Sol’s, but not as cold as it used to be.
Skylar.
I’m rarely alone with him these days. If he’s home, my brother’s attached to him like velcro, and I love how wrapped up in each other they are. How they move around each other like the sun and the fucking moon. How weak my friend’s demons are in the face of how content he is.
And freshly fucked.
Jesus.
I tip my gaze to the ceiling, for once glad I carry enough mental fragility that Skylar will think I’m angsting over the pile of money Sol’s left in the fuckingmicrowave, where his mam used to hide the tax credits from his father, instead of having an actual conversation. “Can you bank it for me? I’ll figure it out with Sol one day, I promise.”
“Why are you two so bad at talking about money? You talk about everything else.”
“Do we?”
“Don’t you?” Skylar rolls up the bag, securing the tatty notes before tucking it in his pocket. “You’re basically married at this point.”
I jerk my head too fast and endure the shunt it brings. “What does that mean?”
Skylar opens his mouth to answer, but Mal appears behind him, peering over his lover’s head with a stare that feels like a loaded weapon.