Page 32 of The Season
“Should we wake her up? Or leave her on the couch to sleep?” I ask.
Antoine purses his lips in thought, looking between Lily’s sleeping form and the door to her room. A door that is currently open, since Tom went out not that long ago, and hasn’t been back yet.
“I don’t like the thought of her sleeping in there, with that… thatblaireau.” Antoine finally proclaims, his voice dropping to a low rumble. “How did you find him, anyway?”
I worry my lower lip with my teeth, the persistent hum of anxiety running like electricity under my skin. It’s been there ever since I asked Tom to stay. “I met him at the rental shop. He’s one of the new hires.”
Tom had come to us red-eyed and upset a few days ago, desperate for a job, and I’d hired him. It hadn’t been a hard decision to make—we were short staff and he’d needed the work. And I’ve never been one to turn away someone in need, not if I could help them.
“So you don’t really know him,” Antoine accuses, fixing those unnervingly sharp eyes on me, his full lips pulling into a frown.
“I don’t really know any of you,” I defend, then cringe at the flash of hurt in Antoine’s expression. I shake my head, then hurriedly add: “I mean, I know you better now, since we’ve been living together for a couple weeks. And Matty and Eddie.”
Antoine gives a one-shouldered shrug, brushing off my words, his gaze dropping to Lily. “I think we move her to her bed,” he says resignedly. “She’ll sleep better there than on the couch.”
Between the two of us, we manage to move her to her bed without waking her. She mumbles incoherent words as I pull the covers up over her, tucking them under her chin. I smile into the darkness, reminded of my brother and sister back home, of helping Mom and Dad look after them. Especially when they were younger.
Those had been the hard years, but also the most beautiful, in a lot of ways.
I think Mom and Dad still feel guilty for how much everything changed when the twins were born. At twelve years old, I’d gone from an only child to the older brother of two babies with Down Syndrome. Mom got hit by post-natal depression pretty bad and Dad had used his work as an escape. I’d been there to pick up the slack, mixing bottles when Mom was too tired to get out of bed, changing diapers, bundling up the twins and pushing them in the stroller down the street.
I’d been angry about it at first—angry, and scared, because I had no idea what I was doing. But then they’d given me their first smiles, their first steps, their first words. They’d wrap their little bodies around my legs when I got home from school, or fall asleep in my arms while I did my homework, and it had been everything.
Mom and Dad don’t understand, but for me, having them, being needed by them, I’m pretty sure it saved my life.
“She still asleep?” Antoine asks as I pull the door to Lily’s room shut behind me. I blink, surprised to see him still standing in the hallway, waiting for me to come out.
“Yah,” I say with a wistful smile, thoughts of my family mingling with thoughts of Lily. “She’s sound asleep.”
“Good.” He gives a curt nod, then tilts his chin down the hallway to the room we share with Matty. “I’ll see you in there. Just going to brush my teeth.”
For a brief moment, I think of following him into the bathroom, since I need to brush my teeth too, but I stop myself. Because that would be weird. Roommates don’t brush their teeth together.
The bathroom door shuts behind him, leaving me alone in the darkened hallway with my thoughts and the familiar ache of loneliness that’s been building ever since we left the couch.
Antoine is not my partner, and neither is Lily, no matter how incredible this evening with them both was. They’re my roommates, and maybe—if I don’t scare them away with my clinginess first—they’ll become my friends.
I square my shoulders, and stare at the door, trying not to listen to what Antoine is doing on the other side as I wait for my turn. Like a normal person.
Whatever normal is.
The door to our room swings open, light flooding the hall as Matty stumbles out, his eyes swollen and hair sleep-mussed. I blink at him in concern. It doesn’t look like he’s been sleeping. It looks like he’s been crying.
“You alright, bud?” I ask, keeping my voice soft so as not to wake Eddie and Liam in the next room.
Matty gives me a curt nod, his gaze drifting past my shoulder to Lily’s door. “I’m fine.” He folds his arms over his chest and, in the narrow confines of the hallway, I’m suddenly aware of what a big unit this guy is. Bigger than me, which is saying something. “Just waiting for the bathroom.”
I look between him and Lily’s door, then remember the pained expression on his face before he stormed off to his room after dinner, and Lily’s concern that his feelings had been hurt.
“She’s asleep,” I tell him gently, offering him what I hope is a friendly smile. “I think she’s pretty wiped out after what happened today.”
Matty huffs, then reaches up to rub the back of his neck. “You two looked pretty cozy together on the couch.” He narrows his eyes at me accusingly, but there’s no malice in them, only hurt and longing and the red-rimmed signs of tears shed in an empty room.
I know that feeling well, but seeing it on him, on this nice guy I’ve come to know over the past couple weeks, and knowing that I put it there—it’s not a pleasant thought.
“I was just giving her a back rub.” I tell him, and I have to push back the urge to wrap one arm around him, to pull him into a hug. “I… I’m not into her like that.” I bite the inside of my cheek, contemplating whether to tell him more, but hesitate. “I’m pretty sure she’s not into me like that either,” I say instead. Because if he’s crushing on her—and it’s pretty clear he is—then that’s what he’s going to care about.
Matty rolls his eyes. “Right. Of courseyou’dthink that.”
