Page 60 of Flagrant Foul
I cry intermittently as I snack and tell her what happened last night.
She pats my shoulder now and again, and her eyes pool when mine do.
“I’msosorry, dear boy,” she says.
She selects a thick slice of Brie and a ribbon of prosciutto, arranges it on a sesame cracker, and gives it to me.
I bite into it gratefully.
Honestly, I didn’t think there was anything she could do or say that could make me feel better about my situation, but I also didn’t think she’d make me a charcuterie board at nine in the morning.
“At least I know I’m not crazy now.” I sniff.
“I never doubted it for a second.”
“I appreciate your support, Mae, I do, but I’m pretty sure that if a mental health professional were to come into transcripts of some of the conversations we’ve had—and not even the worst ones, just the regular ones—they might disagree.”
We look at each other for a beat and start cackling at the same time.
“Well, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” she says.
“Yeah, fuck ’em.”
“Seriously though. Are you okay, Theodore?”
I drop my head, raking my hands through my hair. “Honestly, I don’t know how I am. I’m upset and I’m sad. So fucking sad. Not just that we can’t be together. I’m sad about everything. I’m sad about the whole world and how awful people are, and I’m sad about things that happened to Sev, and I can’t tell if I love my brother more than ever, or if I hate him, but I’m like, also, weirdly…at peace.”
“How so?”
“It’s like I’ve spent most of my life railing against something, trying to change it. Trying to fight it. Trying tomakeit happen.” I take a bite of my cracker, chew, and swallow. “When I think about it, almost everything in my life has revolved around Sev in some way, only, there was a piece of the puzzle missing, and I didn’t know it… The thing that’s always messed me up most was that I love him so much, and even though he pushes me away, I’ve always kind ofknownhe feels the same way about me. It’s made me feel insane because my version of reality and actual reality haven’t been in alignment. There was a piece of the puzzle missing.”
I wipe my hands on a napkin and put it down on the side table on my left. “I have the piece now. I don’t like it, but I have it. I see things clearly. I know what I am to Sev and what he is to me, and I think in time, I’m going to accept it. Not just in words. I’m going to really accept it. Deeply and fully. I want to. I want him to know what it’s like to be loved by someone with nothing to gain from it. Truly loved. I want that for him. I don’t care if it hurts me or puts part of my life on hold. I don’t want anyone but him anyway, and I never have, so really, I’m not missing out on anything.
“If friendship is all he can offer me, I want to be his friend. I want to keep living with him for as long as hewants to live with me, and yes, that’s a little selfish of me because Iloveliving with him. I feel so much happier and less anxious when he’s around. But mainly, I want him to live with me for him. I want him to live with me for long enough that by the time he leaves, he knows what it’s like to belong somewhere. I might not be the one who gets to be with him, but Iamgoing to be the one who loves him so hard that he has the time and space he needs to heal.”
Mae blinks rapidly and dabs at her eyes with a tissue. “If you ask me, you should get your rotten brother to come down for a visit and give me five minutes with him. I’ll knock some sense into him in no time.”
I laugh despite myself, not just because I love Mae, or because she’s crazy, or even that I don’t think she’d actually do it. I laugh because we’re so damn similar.
“Do you want to see something ridiculous?” I ask.
“Always!”
“Now, before I show you, please bear in mind that I was in aterriblestate last night. I hadn’t slept at all when I wrote this, and I was very, very upset. I wasn’t myself at all. I’m not usually this childish.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
I turn my phone screen toward her. She puts on her glasses and squints at the screen.
Urgent: Call Mom - Tell on Nate.
Mae throws her head back and squeals with laughter. “Oh, that’s priceless! Look! You set a reminder in your calendar and everything.”
“Too right I did. The fucking thing woke me up at six-thirty this morning. I tell you, Mae”—I shake my head and shrug simultaneously—“I’m a completely different person in the middle of the night.”
“Same,” she says, and I believe her.
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