Page 109 of Goldrage
Julian floats through my thoughts—he’s never far—but for now, for this moment, I let myself enjoy this: Aurelia’s warmth, Lorenzo’s terrible jokes, Eleanora trying not to laugh at them, Roby stealing chocolate off the table when he thinks no one’s looking.
We spend the afternoon outside just enjoying each other’s company.
The sun dips lower, painting everything gold. We drink and talk about nothing important. About everything except the dead we’re carrying. And slowly, incrementally, I feel something in my chest that isn’t just grief.
Hours later, the evening has turned into something peaceful. Lorenzo and Eleanora have taken Roby for ice cream as a bribe to stop him from whining about wanting more chocolate. The patio is ours now, just Aurelia and me in the perfect temperature.
“Remember when Valentine first gave me a gun and I went out with you and Julian to hunt?” Aurelia says suddenly, her head on my shoulder. “And I shot Julian in the foot?”
I surprise myself by laughing, all the wine having loosened me up. “Thankfully it was only a BB gun or Julian would’ve lost a toe. You’ve gotten… marginally better since then.”
She swats my chest. “Hey. Didn’t you almost shoot Lucian’s ear off once?”
I hide my smile behind my wine glass. “That was a faulty rifle.”
“Uh-huh. Sure it was.”
We trade stories like currency: Valentine teaching her to hot-wire cars for no reason at all, Valentine’s terrible cooking that we all pretended to love, the way he’d grunt instead of using actual words when he was thinking.
Then, inevitably, we circle back to more stories about Julian.
“He used to steal my books,” I find myself saying. “When we were young. He’d sneak into my room and take whatever I was reading, then pretend he’d found it somewhere else.”
“Why?”
“Because he wanted to read the same things. Emulate me and be able to talk about subjects I liked.” My throat tightens. “I always knew but never said anything. I let him think he was getting away with it.”
Aurelia’s hand finds mine. “That’s so sweet. I keep thinking about how he’d sometimes sneak me up to the penthouse during those stupid parties. We’d hide and make fun of all the hideous outfits. One time, this woman came out to the patio wearing this giant feather hat and Julian said it looked like a dead peacock. I laughed so hard soda came out my nose.”
I can see it: Julian’s wicked humor when he let himself relax.
“He was brilliant,” I say. “Could have been anything if our parents hadn’t—” I stop and swallow hard. “If I hadn’t failed him.”
“Adrian.” Aurelia’s voice is firm. She turns my face toward hers, forcing me to meet her eyes. “You didn’t fail him. He made his choices.”
“I should have?—”
“What? Fix two decades of damage that you didn’t cause?” Her thumb brushes my cheek, and I realize I’m crying again. “You tried. God, you tried so hard. But some people can’t be saved. They have to save themselves.”
“He was my little brother.”
“And you loved him. That matters. Even at the end, even through everything, you loved him. He knew that.”
We sit in silence and gaze out at the night, listening to the crickets. My tears dry slowly, and Aurelia stays pressed against me.
“Valentine would have hated this,” she says eventually. “All this crying and talking about feelings.”
“He would have grunted and gone to clean his guns.”
“Then made us terrible coffee and pretended he wasn’t listening while we talked.”
“That coffee.” I actually smile at the memory. “It was like drinking motor oil.”
She sniffs besides me and then wipes her cheeks. “I miss them both so much.”
“Me too.”
And we sit there, two broken people doing our best to hold each other up through the pain. Tomorrow, we’ll start figuring out what comes next. Tomorrow, we’ll have to be more than our grief.
