Page 63 of Organized Chaos
There was a burning desire to console him, to unburden him of this guilt. My hand reached out for him. “Brandon...”
“You’re just a kid.” He rubbed his temples with repressed disgust in his voice.
My hand fell away, dejected eyes dropping to the floor. Perhaps by law, we didn’t do anything wrong, but it was still way too fucked up.
“You were even younger when we first...” he couldn’t finish the sentence. “Just sixteen... Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
He paced the length of the room and cursed some more. Brandon looked distraught while he ran two hands up the sides of his head.
“I have known you since you were a baby ....” Brandon paced, interlocking his fingers above his crown. “Babysat you. The things we did... Fuck.” He put the heel of his palm on his forehead as if erasing the memories.
Brandon wasn’t himself. There was no dry sarcasm, and his cool veneer had shredded into a million pieces. I was staring at a stranger rather than a man I had known my entire life.
Again, I wanted to reach for him, but an invisible barrier separated us.
Brandon hated his father for this exact reason, and now he hated himself for having gone down the same path. Suffering Milo’s wrath and risking his reputation paled in comparison to his personal dilemma.
He shook his head with a self-deprecating smile. “I spent years hating him. Now, I’m even worse than my father. How fucked up is that?”
“Brandon, no—”
He whirled around, leaving my mouth hanging in mid-sentence. “I didn’t recognize you, but you must have recognized me. Why did you lie to me?”
Just as I had feared, Brandon was accosting me upon finding out the truth.He is repulsed by me.
“I didn’t lie,” I said carefully. “I thought w-we were acting.”
“Excuse me?”
“Playing out the roles from that story we wrote,” I explained, unable to hide the hopefulness that had crawled into my tone.
His features tensed. “What are you talking about?”
I searched his face for any sign of recognition. When nothing sparked, my disappointment hung heavier than ever.How can he still not remember?
I quietly turned toward my unruly suitcase. It lay dormant on a chair next to the fireplace, which the hotel staff had turned on earlier. There was protective glass on either side of the fire. Only the top was left open, adding cozy heat during the cold month along with extra illumination to sort through my disheveled luggage.
Clothes and shoes spilled out of my burgundy carry-on. Under any other circumstance, Brandon would have given me a stern lecture about it.
Sorting through the mess, I pulled out the book, removing the protective cloth on top. For years, this book had been for my eyes only, though technically, Brandon was a part-owner.
Impatient for answers, Brandon moved to stand next to me, and I reluctantly handed the book over. “Here.”
He looked down at the makeshift book fashioned out of parchment papers with poorly sewn strings. “What the hell is this?”
“Open it.”
“I don’t need to read a book. Use your damn words to explain.”
“It’ll be self-explanatory if you just open it,” I insisted softly.
Brandon snatched the book from my hand and opened it roughly. My heart twisted at his careless attitude. It was hard to watch my prized possession be handled with utter negligence.
“Careful,” I couldn’t help but implore. “It’s fragile. I don’t know why we wrote this story on parchment paper.” I laughed nervously. “It took forever to put it together.”
He didn’t respond, eyes glossing over the pages. Horizontal stripes of shadows from the fire highlighted his face, allowing me to see his reaction. The veil had lifted by the way Brandon rubbed his scruffy beard. The book wasn’t very long, and by the last page, comprehension had settled.
“It was for that essay competition,” I reminded.
