The Falling (Brightest Stars, #1)(96)

Life went on like that, both numb and excruciating, for a stretch of days. I worked. I slept. I cried. I may have watched a couple of movies with Elodie. I can’t remember any of their plots. I knew a Tuesday had passed because both my father and Estelle called me. I didn’t bother to call them back and ended up powering my phone off for a full twenty-four hours to see if I could get my life back on track without the distraction of the outside world. This is what my soul needed, to stop comparing my life to everyone else’s online perfection. I needed to find my roots again and remember the life I was building for myself before I met Kael. My self-sufficient bubble. I wasn’t made to fall for someone and then crash on the other side of it.

I’m not sure when it was, how many days post-breakup, that I had come home from work to find Austin waiting for me on my porch. My brother was easy to spot from a distance; he was fidgeting, tapping his fingers against his knees. His face was blotchy red and his blond hair was a mess, making his features melt into something close to our father’s. There were no cars in the driveway or parked on the street, so I couldn’t figure out how he got there.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I asked, mildly panicked, and sat down next to him.

He shook his head.

My brother’s eyes were bloodshot and swollen like he hadn’t slept in days. His lips were dry and cracking, with little slices of red along the bottom one. He was even more disheveled than usual. Yet what would make most people unattractive only added to the many things that women found endearing about him. He was dressed in a white sweatshirt with Riverdale High School printed above a pocket on the left side. Riverdale High School?

“Is that Kael’s shirt?” I tugged on his sleeve.

“Huh?” Austin looked down at his sweatshirt and nodded.

My entire body shifted. Kael somehow snuck himself into my house via my brother. There was hardly a place where I was safe from reminders of him.

“Where did you get his shirt?”

“I was at his place and wore it.”

Before I could respond, he began to speak. “Let’s not fight about him, K. I already got into it with Dad.” Austin dipped his head down between his knees.

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted more answers, but I could feel my brother’s energy was depleted, and he, unlike me, had never been able to suffer in silence.

“To be honest, I’m tired of being back in Benning. I just want to go somewhere else. Not to Uncle Rudy’s again, just . . . somewhere else. Don’t you ever feel like that?”

“Yeah,” I said and sighed. “But I bought a house here, so I couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to.”

Austin rolled his eyes. “That’s not an excuse. You know in this market you could sell and make more than you put into it.”

“Since when are you savvy about the housing market?” I asked, playfully challenging his authority. “Where would you even go if you left?”

Austin was a nomad, where I was a settler.

“Arizona. Barcelona,” he daydreamed.

“You can’t even point to Barcelona on a map.”

“Yeah, I can.” His light eyes were facing the sky, half opened. “And Berlin. Rome. Anywhere. Hell, I’d go live in a van on the coast. I really can’t stand being this close to Dad.”

I agreed with him. But we were two totally different humans, even if we’d shared a womb. It was easy for him to abandon all logic, I just couldn’t.

“Do you even know where your passport is?” I asked.

“Yes. And yours. They’re both at Dad’s, in the drawer.” He gave me a sneaky look, like he had found the entrance to Narnia.

“If only.” I laughed.

He leaned against me to reach his phone when it started to vibrate in the pocket of his joggers. A number that wasn’t saved was on the screen. He seemed surprised and agitated, and he immediately ignored the call. When he looked up at me he shifted uncomfortably. Something was up; I could read Austin like a book.

“Who was that?” I asked, when he stopped my hand in midair as I tried to reach for his phone. “Was it Katie?” I rolled my eyes.

Austin’s face broke into a smile, and he shook his head. He almost looked relieved. “No. God, no.”

My mind wandered to being in my old bedroom at my dad’s, with Kael, the first night I met Katie and embarrassed myself insulting her, which seemed so trivial now. After the fight, Kael’s run-in with the MPs, and everything that’s happened, I was relieved to hear that Austin had moved on from that chaotic woman.

I was brought back to reality with Austin’s leg shaking the way it did whenever he was nervous. It was getting cooler outside, and I wanted to go in.

“Do you want to stay here for a little bit?” I looked at Austin and, for a second, I could see our mom in him, something around the eyes, about the shape of his mouth. We’d always be a mash-up of our parents, and that horrified me.

“No.” He sighed. “I don’t know. I need to figure my shit out. I can’t do that from your couch.”

“It’s cheaper than Barcelona, and besides, how the hell would you even pay for a trip like that?” I joked.

“Actually, I was thinking about staying with Martin.”

His words punched me. A sucker punch.