Page 65 of Give My Everything
But I can feel the corners of my mouth tip up at his stupidity.
“It makes me feel like I’m going to get chucked off a building or something,” he adds as I turn my head to look in his direction.
“When have I ever given you the impression that I murder people?” I ask.
Wyatt smirks and drops into one of the chairs facing me. “Ever since I was eight years old and you said to me, ‘Wyatt, if you tell mom I broke the TV, I’ll murder you,’” he says, his tone light. “You literally said thoseexactwords.”
At that memory, I do end up smiling slightly.
“Holy shit, I forgot about the TV.”
Wyatt crosses his arms, his eyes narrowing at me in mock displeasure as he likelyalsorecalls exactly what happened back then.
We’d been playing around in the house, something we were normally forbidden from doing—you can’t risk damaging the art, of course—but dad was somewhere and mom was out of town and Vicki had been left in charge of us.
She was already our nanny and house manager and maid and a million other things, but she had usually only been left in charge of us for a few days at a time. This particular time was for two entire weeks, a whole fourteen days without our parents.
So of course, we brought out our toy light sabers and had quite a time running through the house and makingwohmnoises as if the glowing sabers were actually real.
It was all fun and games until Wyatt hit me a little too hard. So then I hit him back a little too hard.
As brothers do, we started wrestling and rolling all over the floor of the living room.
Until I shoved him way, way,waytoo aggressively.
Which resulted in him pitching backward, his eyes wide, his arms flailing. Wyatt fell right into the entertainment center, the force of his body causing the brand-new plasma TV, which had been delivered the day before but not yet installed properly, to wobble and wobble and fall to the ground with a clatter.
We just stared at it for a second, both of us wide-eyed with shock, before we scrambled to lift it up to survey the wreckage.
The screen itself was a shattered mess, but all the broken pieces were still inside the TV—one of those weird plasma things—so there wasn’t really a mess to clean up.
Even so, there was definitely no way to hide what had happened. This wasn’t a vase we could throw in the trash. This was the brand-new TV.
Looking back, what I actually said to Wyatt in the wake of us looking at the broken TV was just slightly different.
“Wyatt, if you tell mom I broke the TV, I’ll murder you. We both know it was actuallyyourfault.”
“No way!” he shouted, his face contorted with anger. “You pushed me—it’syourfault.”
I crossed my arms, glaring down at him even though he couldn’t have been more than an inch shorter than me.
“Everythingis your fault.”
Wyatt’s face pinched in pain, his sudden emotion startling me, and he sprinted off through the house.
We never talked about that. I mean, we were kids. Kids say stupid shit, and I don’t even know if Wyatt remembers the whole conversation.
But I’ve remembered it.
Now and then that specific memory will come to me and splinter something inside me, will remind me why I don’t deserve a brother like Wyatt, or a sister like Ivy.
“Alright, so hit me. I’m assuming this is about Remmy, right?” he says, leaning back in his chair and watching me with curious eyes.
I nod just once. “Yeah. I’m hoping for some advice.”
The words come out stilted, mostly because it’s a difficult thing to verbalize out loud. I’ve never asked Wyatt for advice before, especially not about something this important.
And the guy doesn’t let it pass.
