Page 46 of Close Quarters

“And you don’t have to stay up and babysit me. I’m fine.”

“Sure.”

“Quit!”

“Quit what?” he asked, his voice finally showing an edge of weariness. “Giving a shit. Is that what’s pissing you off? Or is it because you can’t be pissed off at dreams? I mean, I guess you could, but that would mean getting pissed off at your own head, which don’t you do enough?—”

“Wait,” I interrupted before he could go on his full ramble. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if he rambled because he felt the undying need to fill silence or because he was nervous. “What about my dreams?”

“You know, I could tell you, but that would require you not to rip my head off because I might be showing you that god-awful thing called kindness.”

“I don’t need your?—”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, God in Heaven,” he groaned, clapping his hands over his face and squeezing. “That shit again.”

“Yes!” I insisted between clenched teeth. “Because it’s the truth!”

“Like, do you even understand that pity comes in more than one flavor?” he asked, voice muffled behind his hands. “Like, there’s the ‘oh you poor baby, how bad I feel for you’ that you hate so much. And then there’s the ‘wow, what you’re going through sucks, and I feel bad for you’ like…seriously?”

“You’re acting like there’s a difference.”

“There is, you stubborn, prideful asshole! The first is because you’re looking down on the person to make yourself feel better. The second is…because you care about them because you feel bad that person is going through it, and you want to try to help. Not because you need help but because you want to give it.”

“I don’t?—”

“AGH,” he bellowed, flopping back onto his bed, flailing his arms and legs in every direction. “Why are you like this? I’m not trying to treat you like a child. I’m treating you like a full-grown man who’s had a bad night and, from the sounds of it, a shitty life. Like, do you really think every fucking person who shows you kindness, especially in bad moments, is looking down on you? God’s sake, do you treat your sister like that? What about your grandma?”

On one level, I knew he was trying to make a point, and it was probably a good one. All I heard was a comment about my grandmother, and felt the still raw wound in me open again. It should have enraged me, my pain funneling into my anger until I snapped and barked at him, prepared to fight.

Instead, I felt the pain leak out of me, wrapping around me in a cocoon of black misery. My eyes prickled, and I ducked my head, trying to hide the evidence that would probably start showing on my face. Even now, as I felt my emotions overwhelm me, the last thing I wanted was for someone to see me cry.

I had been seven years old the last time I’d let something like that happen. I’d got into trouble again, as I did a lot at that age. Back then, I couldn’t explain why I kept doing everything I knew I shouldn’t be doing, but I did them anyway. I didn’t even remember what I’d done wrong, but I remembered tears springing to my eyes as they screamed at me. It didn’t matter how many times I got yelled at. I still always found ways to screw up and then had to fight tears as I was punished.

“Fuck, there he goes with the waterworks again,” my mother had hissed, her face twisted into such a look of disgust that I’d felt my stomach twist into painful knots.

“I’ll fucking give him something to cry about since he don’t wanna listen,” my father had snapped, descending on me.

It wasn’t my first or last beating at his hands, and it didn’t really stick out. My mother was what had stuck out to me more than anything. The way she looked as though I were nothing, like a piece of dog shit on her shoe. I hadn’t just done something wrong. I had disgusted her by showing her my tears. Minutes later, trying to staunch the bleeding from my lip, it was her expression that stuck with me. I had vowed then that it would be the last time anyone would ever see me cry, and it was a promise I had kept to this day.

“No,” I muttered, staring steadily at my bare feet. “I didn’t treat them like that.”

“Didn’t?” he asked carefully. “As in?—”

“My sister’s fine,” I said, clearing my throat roughly. “Mara’s still…well, hanging in there, like she always does.”

“But—”

“Yeah,” I said in a low voice. “My grandma wasn’t so lucky.”

“Geez…when?”

“Couple of months ago.”

“A couple of…oh.”

His tone brought my head up to frown at him. “What?”

“Would that, uh…happen to coincide with the time you decked Riley and almost got into it with me?” he wondered, arching a brow.

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