Page 37 of Moonstruck
Despite its modest size, the apartment was clean, no dishes congealing in the sink, no dirt or dust, which was more than he could say for his and Avi’s apartment in the city. His brother was hardly a neat freak. Luckily, they had a housekeeper who came daily.
But there was a large amount of clutter starting in what should have been the dining area but was actually Zane’s version of a home office. There were two desks set up back to back, as if somebody other than just Zane worked there. Who else came and worked there with Zane? Who else knew of Asa’s family? One wall held a dossier on his family that would have impressed the CIA, including a map of the city filled with pins Asa recognized as drop sights.
Beside one of the desks sat a pile of neatly stacked bound pages. Upon closer inspection, Asa saw they were manuscripts. Did Zane have secret aspirations beyond journalism? Did he want to write books? Fiction? True crime? Asa tucked that in his back pocket for later. It would be good to have leverage if Zane decided a byline was more important than Asa’s attention.
While Asa moved around the apartment, he kept his ears trained on Zane and his movements around the space. He was currently in his room, rummaging through the drawers, likely looking for clothes. Or a weapon to brandish. He was giving Zane a lot of leeway. Avi would say too much leeway. That he was taking his life in his hands by not watching what Zane did in the other room. Maybe there was a landline. Maybe there was a gun. Neither of those thoughts swayed Asa away from his exploration.
There was a well-worn sofa in the small living room and a reasonably sized television. On the walls were a number of black and white photos, mostly landscapes, and a few of people on the street. They were all exceptional, but Asa had never heard of the photographer, Blake Marshall, though maybe one day he would.
On a shelf above the small TV were two family photos. One was of Zane and a similar looking man, standing beside two older people, presumably their parents. That must have been the brother. He had the same curly hair and honey eyes, but he was broader, sturdier, taller, perhaps more commercially attractive, but in a department store underwear model kind of way. Attractive but not runway worthy, not interesting in any way.
Not like Zane. Talent scouts would go crazy for Zane’s insane bone structure and those crazy curls and that almost bashful smile he’d made when he’d so easily seduced Asa last night. Yeah, agents would line up to represent Zane.
Still, the man in the photo had kind eyes and a huge smile, and he hugged Zane close like he was the most important thing in his world. The same couldn’t be said for the parents. Asa was no body language expert but it was clear the boys were attempting to distance themselves from the stern-looking people in the photograph.
Asa picked up the second picture, smiling at the insanely goofy grin on Zane’s face as he sat perched on his brother’s back like he’d snuck up on him just as the photo was taken. When was the last time Zane had smiled like that?
“That’s Gage.”
Asa turned to see Zane in a pair of black jeans and a hot pink t-shirt that shouldn’t have worked on anybody but, somehow, looked killer on him. He’d thrown a gray beanie cap over his mop of curls and no longer wore his glasses. Asa did his best to tamp down his disappointment. Contacts were obviously more practical. Still, Zane looked so…innocent in those glasses.
Asa turned back to the picture, setting it down. “He looks…nice.”
Zane wandered closer and picked the picture up, his shoulder’s sagging as he looked down at their smiling faces. “He was. Most of the time. Sometimes, he could be a real dickhead.”
Asa laughed. He could say the same of Avi.
Asa nodded towards the family photo. “Those are your parents?”
Zane grimaced, then nodded. “Bev and Irv Scott.”
Asa knew everything he needed to know about them simply by the way Zane spoke their names. “They seem…intense.”
“Bev is a lot. My father is just…whatever Bev wants him to be. Usually, that’s silent.”
Oof. “So, you don’t get along?”
Zane cut his gaze to him, setting the picture back into place. “You really want me to get into my fucked up family dynamics?”
Asa shrugged, reaching out to snag one springy curl, pulling it straight just to watch it bounce into place. “I mean, you already know mine. How much worse can yours be?”
“I guess it depends on the yardstick you’re using to measure it. I wasn’t raised by a family of murderers, but I was raised to be invisible. Gage had the spotlight from the moment he was born. My mom had tried to get pregnant with him for five years. She was almost forty. He was her miracle.”
“And you?” Asa asked, adjusting Zane’s cap for no other reason than to have another excuse to touch him.
“I was the accident, the drunken mistake who destroyed my mom’s body and almost killed her when she hemorrhaged at thirty weeks. I ruined her life. Just ask her.”
There it was. The seven month age difference. “I can’t imagine you being invisible in any way.”
Zane gave a humorless laugh. “No? I can give you Bev’s number. She has an alphabetized list of all the ways I’ve disappointed her. The number one reason being that I wasn’t the one who died so Gage could live. Gage was going to be somebody, you see. I was just the screw up. Correction. I still am the screw up.”
Asa could feel his teeth clenching as Zane spoke. He really believed that about himself. Asa’s gaze cut back to the plump woman with her dyed blonde hair and sneer of a smile, contemplating giving Zane her eyes as a birthday present. If she couldn’t see how perfect Zane was, maybe she didn’t deserve to see at all.
“You can’t kill my mother,” Zane said, alarm creeping into his voice as he looked at Asa’s mutinous expression. “She’s the literal worst, but she makes her own misery. I promise. I don’t care about her anymore.”
It was a total lie and they both knew it. Asa didn’t call him out on it, though. “I don’t think anybody’s ever shown her the real meaning of misery before,” Asa said, unable to tear his gaze away from the woman who made Zane feel so badly about himself.
“She lost her son—the only one she cared about. That’s enough pain for one person.”
