Page 60 of Dark Ink

Mason was looking in bewilderment at the throng of people behind him. Maybe he thought I was seeing things like he thought I was seeing my mystery girl. Maybe he was too drunk to remember that Eithne was real. Or maybe I’d made up that memory, too, Eithne at Dublin Ink. Eithne being real. Maybe this was a nightmare and he wasn’t really walking toward me.

I’d prefer that. Insanity over this. Insanity over him.

“My brother,” I snarled. “Liam.”

Vehemence dripped from my lips as surely as if I had spilled my beer; I could feel it, cold, wet, unnatural. Mason was trying to deny his guilt, but I was certain he was in on it. Like a caged animal my head whipped around the too packed bar. I was certain Aurnia and Rachel were over there laughing at me: a plan gone perfectly. I was certain Conor was ready to grab me with those bear arms the second I attempted to escape. Even Noah and Aubrey and little, crazy Candace collecting empty beer bottles, even all of them, I was certain had played a part. I was outnumbered, cornered. Everyone was against me. My friends had turned. My family had not only abandoned me, but actively worked against me. If it was paranoia from the drugs I’d been taking with too much regularity, I was way too far away from sober to realise it. All I knew was that I had to get out of there. And fast.

I shoved Conor away without warning and he growled like a beast, beer bottle shattering on the floor as he stood for a fight. Mason hollered something as eyes turned to the disturbance. Aurnia and Rachel had stopped dancing. I shoved past Mason as he shouted, “Rian, what the fuck?!”

“Fuck you,” I said to Mason first. Then to Conor who was still smouldering mad and ready to fight. “And fuck you, too,” I shouted at the girls who stared in shock as they got jostled about by people on the dance floor.

The gust of chilled air outside The Jar was no relief. It just brought me back to the wind that somehow slipped through the boards of the barn, somehow found its way beneath the burlap I huddled under, somehow always howled the second I managed to fall asleep. The emptiness of the street was the same emptiness I found when I stumbled dead tired off a bus in Dublin for the first time, nothing on my back but my own shirt.

The hand suddenly on my shoulder brought back baseball bats, lengths of rough rope, and frying pans still searing hot from the stove.

I shirked off Liam’s grip, but he circled round me like I was nothing more than a frightened calf who knew no better, who needed protecting, who needed being told where to go. I wanted to hit him, my own flesh and blood. It ran in the family, after all.

But there he was. Blocking my path. Standing right in front of me. Taller than me by a good two inches. Broader in the shoulders. Hands big and meaty. A “real” man, my father would have said. A “true” man, he would have sneered as he looked me up and down and found me always lacking. Easy to push around. Easy to beat. Easy to take his anger out on because I looked like her. It was the only way I recognised my brother after years apart: he had Mom’s eyes, too. Pale in the pulsing lights. Like a cloudless sky. Something I knew little of.

“Rian,” Liam said, holding up his hands like he didn’t want to fight.

I snickered. Liam never did. I’d heard my name spoken softly like that a million times. Always kind. Always gentle. Always with a pack of frozen peas at the ready. But never when I really needed him. Never when our father’s knuckles were finding their way between my ribs. Never when Alan laughed and tripped me as I tried to run away. Never when they locked the doors of the barn on howling winter nights to “toughen me up”, to “make me a man”, to “prove whether I was a sissy or not”. Never then. In those moments I never heard my name. Never saw Liam’s face. Never had anyone but myself, the blooming bruises, and the quiet hope that one day I’d run away from it all. Escape it all.

Escape. That’s exactly what I was going to do.

“He’s getting worse,” Liam said, blocking me as I tried desperately to get around him.

I was being flippant when I asked, “Who?” Of course I remembered my goddamn father; how could I forget the bastard who haunted my nightmares?

Liam tried placing his hands on my shoulders. Couldn’t he see this just made me angrier? Being alone to fight your demons was one thing. But expecting someone to come and fight with you, and then them not showing up, was something entirely else. There was a difference between loneliness and abandonment. And my brother had abandoned me.

“Get your fucking hands off of me,” I said, voice trembling with rage.

I wouldn’t be comforted by him. I wouldn’t be soothed or calmed or talked down off my self-righteous little edge. I wouldn’t be the sweet little brother any longer. I was ruined. Broken. Fucking angry. And I liked it that way.

Liam hesitated, but only for a moment before pulling his hands off of my shoulders. He frowned and leaned in a little closer. “Are you alright?”

He followed me as I backed up from the glare of the streetlamp, hid in the circling shadows.

I wiped at my sweating forehead. “That’s none of your business.”

In truth, I didn’t feel alright. Far from it really. A clamminess clung to my skin like morning mist. My fingertips wouldn’t stop trembling. My heartbeat felt fast and faint, like hooves galloping away with no way to stop them. My vision wouldn’t focus on anything. And a pounding in my head was growing louder.

“I tried calling you on the phone, but you wouldn’t answer,” Liam said softly in that fucking tone of his I hated so much. He started to reach out but thought better of it. “I—I had to talk to you.”

“So you got my friends to set me up?” I asked bitterly. “Couldn’t let me have anyone for myself?”

Liam acted surprised. Mocked innocence just like the rest of them. I was shaking more, there on the sidewalk. It was easy enough to convince myself that it was the cold. The wind against sweat. The frozen concrete against shoes too thin.

“I don’t even know your friends,” Liam said. “I don’t know anything about your life here. I mean, I hardly recognise you. You have tattoos. Your face is…more severe. And you’ve gained what seems like fifty pounds of muscle.”

It was an attempt at brevity. At brotherhood. At reconnection. I wanted to spit it from my mouth like poison.

“No longer the scrawny runt to scapegoat for Mom’s death,” I muttered under my breath.

Liam sighed, dragged his fingers through his hair that belonged to Alan, belonged to my father. It was easier like that, with his pale blue eyes fixed on the cracked concrete. I could hate him more. When I didn’t see myself. When I didn’t see Mom.

“We can still heal,” Liam said, lifting his eyes to me.

---