Page 8 of A Brother's Secret

“You didn’t think to pack clothes?” he asked and I moved my laptop and cord aside to pick up the battered tarot deck that Kyle had bought me for my fifteenth birthday, wrapped in a silk scarf a girlfriend had bought me three years ago. She’d been fun, but I couldn’t ever be anyone’s serious sweetheart. Still, she’d known all the sweet spots and I could let her eat me out for hours. At the end of the day, though, there still wasn’t anything like the ‘D’.

“Clothes can be replaced,” I said. “This stuff? Noway.”

“Fair enough,” he said nodding and moved a sketch book or two aside, his long fingers plucking one in particular out of the bottom of the pile. I froze. “I remember this one,” he murmured.

“First one you ever boughtme…”

“My mom bought it, I begged her for like a week and she didn’t want to get it for me. Knew I was shit at sketching, I mean, I was failing art. Didn’t bat an eye when I rolled my eyes and said it was for you, though. Asked why I didn’t tell her so in the first place.”

I smiled a bit ruefully, “How is Mom?” I asked.

His face grew solemn and he opened the fragile, well-turned pages, “She and my dad died four years after you disappeared.”

“Oh, shit…”

“Yeah,” he cleared his throat. “Freak thing, actually. A storm caused a tree to fall on their car. Mom hung on for a few days longer than dad but succumbed to her head injuries.”

“Shit, Kyle… I didn’tknow…”

“How could you?” he asked, “You were long gone bythen.”

Ouch… I sighed and didn’t say anything. I mean, what the fuck was there tosay?

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that…” he started and I held up a hand and shook myhead.

“No, it’s all right, it came out exactly the way it was supposed to and you have every right to be pissed…”

“Mali…” he drew my name in that tone that had always meant to expect a lecture and I looked at him calmly. I kept the expression on my face as tranquil and as blank as I could make it. I didn’t want him to see the truth, the hurt, the shame… His breath left him in a rush and he hung his head, scratching the back of his neck when a knock came at the door. He snapped my old sketch book, my first sketch book, shut, and laid it in the pile with the rest and went to getit.

“Yeah?” he called through thedoor.

“Room service?” a male voice, young, calledback.

Still, Kyle checked and then opened the door carefully. He took a scrap of paper, filled it out and handed it back and said, “Thanks, man.”

He brought the cart into the suite and I raised an eyebrow. He shut the door firmly and re-lockedit.

“Dinner is served, I guess.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic, I’m starved.”

He set the table, and I didn’t stop him. One of the things about being a kid in Kyle Cochran’s existence that I had appreciated was that his family worked like a family was supposed to. You know, the whole Norman Rockwell painting? Dinner around the table every night… One of the things I missed the most, were all the times they made me feel like a part of their family.

My dad was a single dad, he worked and couldn’t always be home to fix me dinner and so it was microwaved mac & cheese and Top Ramen a lot. Every time I could have a real meal at Kyle’s place was a good night. Some of the best nights, but at his house, you always ate at the table, there just wasn’t any other way of doing it. It was how they were. Some things, I guess, didn’t change. The normalcy of it, the dependability, even while the world was on fire around us… well, it hit me right in the feels. All one of them that I hadleft.

“Come and eat,” he said and pulled out one of the chairs for me, going around the table and pulling out the other in front of his own plate. He dropped into it and I went and sat across fromhim.

“So what happens now?” I asked and he arched an eyebrow at me as he put his first bite of food into his mouth.

He chewed slowly, swallowed deliberately and said, “Now, you eat your dinner, then I call up my President and we start to figure this shitout.”

“Just like that, you ride in like some white knight to save the day?” I asked and I couldn’t help the smirk that crossed my lips. I knew it was a cruel one, but he honestly couldn’t be that naïve.

“Not our first rodeo,” he said and took another bite, assessing me coolly. I returned the favor, chewing my own food thoughtfully as I assessed him rightback.

“How the hell did you even get involved with a club like the Sacred Hearts in the first place?” I asked finally when the silence had stretched on far too long betweenus.

“I was in college, my folks had died, and I decided to build a motorcycle from parts. Found this classic frame that needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. I was blogging about it, reaching out over the internet on message boards and shit to help piece things together when I got stuck and I ran into this guy went by the name of Unkind1 as a handle. We started a dialogue. He was a Sacred Heart. We became friends and when we figured out we were local he actually came over and helped me out a few times on some tricky shit. The bike was done, and the rest became history.”

---