Page 5 of Just for Me
Everybody stopped painting. Everybody but Nyree, that is, who’d moved on to another bird, this one clutching a tiny envelope in its talon.
“I …” Luke said, then stopped. “I don’t know what you want me to say. That I told my oldest mate the other night and it got so awkward that I had to leave his house, and he doesn’t know how to be my mate anymore? That I know more of that’s coming my way? I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I knew not everybody would accept it. And I said it anyway, so here I am. Out.”
Hayden couldn’t be silent anymore. “You tell yourself,” he said quietly, “that it’s practice for the tough ones, but it turns out they’re all tough ones. And if you’re a rugby player …”
Luke didn’t answer. He said, “Right. Trees. Painting.” And then stood there and didn’t, until he turned around again and looked. Not at Hayden, and not at Nyree, who wasn’t painting anymore, either. He looked at Kane.
His brother.
Kane said, “I’m sorry, bro. I didn’t know that was what you wanted to talk to me about. So you wouldn’t have to say it in front of everybody.”
“Yeh,” Luke said, and that was all. The moment stretched out, and Nyree said something, but Hayden wasn’t listening. He was watching Luke. And Luke was still watching Kane.
Hayden knew about your sibling who was there for you when your parents weren’t. He knew how much it mattered. He held his breath and thought,Please. Say the right thing. Nobody deserves to be hurt like this.
“I don’t know what to say here,” Kane finally said. “What the … the protocol is.” Which didn’t sound good.
“There’s no protocol,” Hayden said, because somebody had to say it, and he was the one who knew how. “There’s just telling the truth, and asking for the truth. It’s what you don’t say that puts up the barricades, and it’s too hard to get over those barricades.”
Kane said, “Then I guess … it’s that I can’t see you any differently. Still my brother, aren’t you. Still the one who taught me how to be a man. Maybe a decent man. The only one who taught me that.”
Luke’s ears were redder than ever now, and he stared at his brother, mute, like he couldn’t believe it. Like he couldn’t hope for it.
Kane went on, still slowly, “That’s why you never stick around. It’s why you went to France, and why you stayed there. Why it felt like you didn’t want to … to know me anymore. I thought it was like Mum and Dad. That we weren’t meant to share, or to say. That we were meant to be OK alone. Strong, like they said.”
Luke said, “I didn’t … I couldn’t …” And stopped. He was still holding the paintbrush, but his hand was shaking. He looked at it as if he couldn’t believe it, then put his hand out. For support, maybe, but his hand must have touched wet paint, because it jerked back, and he said, “Sorry, Nyree. I didn’t …”
His legs were shaking now, too. He crouched down, dropping the brush, and put a hand over his eyes. His body turned away. Hiding.
Hayden knew about hiding.
Nyree was there, then, her movements quicksilver. Crouched beside him, her pregnant belly against his side, her arms around him. “You’re my brother,” she said. “And I love you. Nothing will ever change that.Ever.”
Luke’s entire body was shaking now, and he must be crying, but he was still hiding his face, so Hayden couldn’t see. Hayden would bet that he hadn’t cried for years. For decades. Now, he couldn’t help it, because when that dam broke, there was no holding back.
Kane was there now, too, though, on Luke’s other side. Holding on. Saying, “Bro. It’s OK. I love you. I always will.”
Hayden had his own problems expressing emotion, possibly. Which was why he normally didn’t.
He cried a little anyway.
Well, it was a touching moment.
3
COLD AS THE RIVER TYNE
Luke couldn’t believehe was crying.
He didn’t cry. He. Did. Not. Cry. He was crying anyway. In front of Nyree. In front of Kane. In front of … some young player named Tom, which wasn’t as bad, because he didn’t know him. But in front of somebody else, too. Zora’s brother, Hayden, who was still sitting on the floor, painting blades of grass that were probably suitable for tiny mice to peek out from, by the look of things here. When Luke had come in and Hayden had turned to look at him, Luke had stopped breathing for a second.
His eyes were brown.Brightbrown, if that was a thing. Amber, maybe, and full of life. His dark hair was cut high and tight, his jeans were cut close and stylish, and the sleeves of his blue-checked shirt were turned up two careful turns from his wrists, revealing some muscle. He looked like the kind of perfect that made Luke’s tongue feel too big for his mouth and the rest of his body feel equally outsized, and made him completely aware that he wasn’t good-looking and never would be.
He could almost hear René’s voice, on that last terrible evening, in his restaurant kitchen, still wearing his white smock and checked trousers. Sitting, as always, over a late meal and yet another glass of wine, but with a sharpness hanging in the air and no ease at all. His final words were still easy to recall, because they may as well have been burned into Luke’s heart. “You are like a bear. A big, scarred,hairybear who can never be elegant, who cannot even converse. The so-entertaininghistoires …you cannot tell them. Even the boring small talk, you cannot do. And the hair that grows everyplace but on your head. The ears, the nose, theface… how can I look at them anymore? How can Itouchyou? With wine, yes, maybe, but it only gets worse. You aren’t thirty-five yet, and I’mforty-five, and yet you look older. It is just too much.”
“I—” Luke started to say.I wax,he wanted to say.Every month. And you said you liked it that I was strong.But you didn’t explain, because you couldn’t make somebody think well of you.
You couldn’t make somebody love you.
