Page 2 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
The thing is, I do not hold Kate accountable for our friendship falling apart. We did a decent job of staying in touch after graduation even though I headed to college, and she headed to Europe to live with her dad full time. We saw each other once or twice a year, whenever she was back in the states, and we texted regularly.
Until we didn’t anymore.
It didn’t make me mad. It just made me worried about her.
My brothers, on the other hand, were thrilled when Kate dropped out of my life.Now you can move on,they said.Now you can stop waiting for something that’s never going to happen.
I know that at some point, I’m going to have to take dating other women more seriously. I’m twenty-eight years old. I don’treallywant to spend the rest of my life reading Kate’s articles—she’s a travel writer—and stalking her Instagram feed. I know precisely how pathetic that makes me look.
Don’t get me wrong. I date.
Just not?seriously.A three-month relationship here. A six-month relationship there. I even made it a year with a woman named Jill my senior year of college. But nothing ever sticks. Because somewhere in the back of my mind, I can’t let go of the hope that at some point, Kate will come back into my life and this time, things will be different.
“It’s been a while?” Perry repeats. “How kind of her to acknowledge.”
“Don’t do that,” I say. “You can’t play it both ways. You were pissed at her when we were still in touch, now you’re pissed at her because we fell out of touch?”
“I’m not pissed ather,” he says. “I just don’t like what she does to your head. She’s been messing with you for a lot of years, Brody.”
I push a hand through my hair. “But that’s on me. She didn’t do anything on purpose. I can’t blame her for what she doesn’t feel.”
Perry lifts a shoulder in the sardonic way that makes my oldest brother so annoying. “I won’t argue with you about it. But I think you’re being generous by saying she’s never strung you along on purpose.”
“Strung me—? Geez, Perry, do you even know what a real friendship looks like?”
He looks at me over the top of his phone. “I don’t need friends,” he says dryly. “It’s bad enough I have so many siblings. Friends and all theirneedinesswould make my life even more unbearable than it already is.”
It’s arguable that the last four years of Perry’s life have been hard enough to justify his attitude. An ugly divorce, settled in court, that nearly cleaned him out. Then all the stuff we’ve dealt with at home. Dad had a stroke and was forced to retire early, leaving Perry to step up and take over daily operations of Stonebrook Farm, the working farm and event center that’s been the family business for almost thirty years. As soon as our only sister, Olivia, finished her MBA, she moved home to help out, but Perry is still juggling a lot.
All that aside, Perry has never been particularly...jovial? Happy isn’t the right word. I’ve seen him happy. He just doesn’t smile much. He’s Roy Kent minus the swear words. Stanley Hudson minus the indifference. Dr. House minus the cuttinginsults. He perpetually looks like he’s carrying the weight of the world—or at least our family—on his shoulders.
“Your life isn’t unbearable,” I say.
“And you aren’t in love with Kate,” he responds without missing a beat. His eyes are back on his phone now. “See? Saying something out loud doesn’t necessarily make it true.”
“I’m not in love with Kate.”
I say it mostly out of habit. Like it’s an affirmation I’m trying to will into existence. I don’t love her because Ican’tlove her. Because it’s fruitless to love her.
“Right. Sure. Should I get Lennox on the phone so he can jog your memory? I bet Flint remembers that night out at the ledge. Should I call him up, too?”
Perry is playing dirty.
I shouldn’t be held accountable for things I said nearly nine years ago, the one time in my entire existence I allowed myself to get completely wasted.
I was with my brothers, up behind the orchards on our family’s property, on a cliffside we brothers dubbedthe ledge. It isn’t truly a cliff. Had one of us ever fallen, we wouldn’t have done more than tumble a few yards into a grove of rhododendrons.
But it still provided great views of the valley, was a short hike from the house, and an even shorter one if we took one of the Gators, the 4x4s we used to get around the farm, to the orchard edge. From the time we were old enough to brave the shadowy, Western North Carolina woods alone, the ledge was our escape whenever we were mad, sad, angry, or in trouble. It was also where we took dates when we wanted to impress them with the view and make out without the risk of our parents catching us.
That night nine years ago, all four Hawthorne brothers were on the ledge together, beverages provided by the two oldest. Perry and Lennox wore their older age like a badge of manhood me and Flint, the brother younger than me, were still aspiring to.
I was exhausted after finishing freshman year finals and bemoaning the fact that my high school best friend had gone off and started traveling the world with some guy.
Preston was her long-distance boyfriend all through our junior and senior year, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. But traveling together, visiting far-off countries, staying in Preston’s family villas and seaside condominiums. It felt so...permanent. Soadult.?
I don’t remember much of what I said out on the ledge that night. But my brothers seem to remember every last word of my miserable tale of unrequited love. They must, because even nine years later, they remind me of it every chance they get.
They also remind me that, with tears streaming down my face, I poetically claimed I’d been in love withtwowomen in my nineteen years of existence. Kate Fletcher and Taylor Swift.
