Page 16 of Lies and Other Drugs

Could I handle it? I’ve always been selfish. William always understood me better than anyone else. Could I handle sharing my brother with the man I hated? “I can handle it.” My voice was choked. I was swallowing my truth.

“I met William at Pike his freshman year, but we didn’t start dating up until six months before his death. When we first met, I caught him taking anti-anxiety meds before a rushing event to cope with the fact that he didn’t want to be there. He decided right off the bat that he hated me.” Youngblood continued his story, and I was hanging onto every last word. “We didn’t have love or lust at first sight. I just found myself feeling incredibly curious about him. I wanted to know who he was. Why he was sad all the time.” There it was again. Curiosity fucking up everyone’s lives.

William was sad? He’d never mentioned that to me. Was I so self-absorbed in my own life that I hadn’t noticed?

“He missed you. But he was also relieved to not have to fake it anymore.”

A moody blues song played over the coffee house speakers as a woman sat beside us, lighting up her cigarette before taking in a long drawl. “Fake what?”

“Tav, your brother was depressed.”

Weren’t we all? Wasn’t life just some stupid cycle of being okay and not being okay and then death? I thought back to our childhood. I tried to remember a time that he was happy—truly happy. I couldn’t. With me, he was calm. With our mom, he was angry. With the world, he was numb. I was just the balm on a wound that couldn’t heal. And I liked that role. It felt good to be needed. I was the problem child. I was always the one in and out of therapy. I was the one with a diagnosis from a psychiatrist.

“Tell me why your relationship was a secret,” I demanded, though my voice was soft. This was great and all, but it didn’t really tell me anything that granted me resolution. It just made me feel worse.

“You’ll find out eventually, but not today. First, you have to knowwhyI did what I did. I wanted to protect him.”

“You’re not making any sense.” Here I was, having brunch with my brother’s murderer, and he was just talking circles around me, never really saying something of importance. Was this another game? Was he just getting off on confusing me more?

“Why do you call me Youngblood?” Nathaniel finally asked after a long moment of silence. He was watching a couple walking by. “Your brother, he always called me that, too. I never understood why…”

I let out a shaky exhale, knowingexactlywhy my brother refused to call Nathaniel by his first name. I couldn’t blame him. I guess subconsciously I was calling him by his last name for the same reason. That name once belonged to someone that was the source of a lot of pain in our life. “Our mom once dated a guy named Nathaniel,” I began, not really sure why I was telling him this. “Made us call him Nate. He was an asshole. He liked me a little more than he should have.” I stood up and went to go grab a napkin, taking a moment to cool the white-hot rage bubbling within me. Youngblood was still waiting patiently.

“Basically, one day, my brother tried to stand up to him on my behalf, and he got the shit beat out of him. Then I beat Nate over the head with a baseball bat, and he ended up in the hospital. William hated that even when he went to save me, I had to save him.” Saying the story out loud felt like a stupid echo of all that had really happened. I could still smell the blood. Feel the invasion on my body. Taste my salty tears.

If I closed my eyes, I could still see the disappointed expression on William’s face. “I never made the conscious decision to call you Youngblood, but I guess I hate the name, too.”

Youngblood started cleaning up the table, stacking our cups in a neat pile that made me wonder if he ever worked in a restaurant. It was something only people that were in the service industry typically did. But I knew that couldn’t possibly be true. His parents made enough money to feed a small country.

“Thank you for telling me. I wondered…”

Youngblood looked at his watch before standing up. I was almost annoyed that our entire brunch was an angsty, moody chat with no resolution. I mean, I knew three things now, at least.

My brother was depressed.

I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.

My brother loved Youngblood. Or at least he loved him enough to not associate the asshole sitting across from me with the devil from our past.

“Can we do something fun? Something that normal people who aren’t arch enemies do? We can put our feud on hold for another hour or two before I face Noah,” I offered.

“No. I have plans,” he replied.

“With who?”

I wasn’t sure what it was, but something in the way he was staring at me made me wonder if he was begging me not to go. I was starting to think that Youngblood had it all wrong. He didn’t want to just pluck me from the concrete. He wanted to hold me in his fist and use my manic need for revenge to his advantage.

Youngblood changed the conversation on a dime. “He told me about your mom’s bird. He said it kept singing all night, and you just couldn’t take it anymore. So you let the bird free and lied to your mom, saying it was her boyfriend at the time,” Youngblood began, effortlessly avoiding my question with a story about William.

I smiled at the memory, remembering how frustrated I was with that damn singing bird my mom never let out of the cage. I thought things with wings were meant to be free. “William told me it was the only time he had leverage over you. You cleaned his room for an entire month so he wouldn’t tell your mom.”

To this day, I still laughed when I thought about it. “Then one day you snapped. You were tired of the blackmail, so you admitted what happened.” Closing my eyes, I looked back on that day with annoyance. Not only didn’t she care, but she was happy to be rid of the bird.

“Are you the bird, William, my mother, or me in this scenario?” I asked.

“Would it be cliche to call me the sky?”

“It would be poetic but really fucking dumb,” I answered.

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