Boone’s hand started pumping mine.
“Mom, stop talking to me like I’m a child,” Brian bit out.
“Then stop acting like one,” she returned.
Brian looked again to Boone and me.
“You know, I don’t need Ryn to bring her A-Team asshole in to get up in my shit. How many reps you do to get biceps like that, bro? Fuck, you’re a joke.”
“Brian, stop talking,” Mom snapped.
Boone abruptly turned to me and urgently bit out, “Ryn!”
But that was it.
All went black and I was out.
* * *“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me? Christ, your sister just passed out in your hospital room, holding her breath because she can’t deal with watching the brother she loves destroy his goddamn life at the same time listen to him hurl vile shit at her. A room a cop is outside to take you into custody because you can’t get out of a world where you think it revolves around you. It’s not that you’ve fucked up her day. You’ve fucked up the last few years of her life after she took care of your ass for the first ones.”
“Saint Kathryn.”
“Yeah, seems to me.”
“It would, since she’s sucking your cock.”
“Jesus. You’d know a joke, Brian, seein’ how big a goddamn one you are.”
I opened my eyes.
I was in a chair in the corner of Brian’s hospital room, Mom sitting on the arm, holding my hand.
I was a bit slouched, but hearing Boone and Brian talk to each other like that, I sat up, whispering, “Mom.”
She shook her head and whispered back, “Let it happen.”
I shook my head too and repeated, “Mom.”
“He needs to hear this.”
“I—”
“Quiet, Kathryn.”
I looked beyond her, and I could tell just by the line of Boone’s body how insanely pissed he was.
He was at the foot of the bed, probably to position himself somewhere where he wouldn’t be tempted to put his hands on my brother.
Brian was sitting up, red-faced and infuriated, leaning toward Boone.
But he must have heard Mom and me because he was looking directly at me.
“Saint Kathryn wakes,” he said snidely.
Boone shifted to the side so my brother couldn’t see me.
He also said, “Christ, you’re still drunk.”
“I just had a few and this is not that big of a fuckin’ deal.”
“You’re in a fuckin’ hospital.”
“I had an accident!”
“Wise up, you made an accident happen, bro. And you’re are so motherfuckin’ lucky, you have no clue. You hit somebody, after you got out of prison, there’d be no hope, you’re so goddamned weak, the guilt would annihilate you and you’d spend the rest of your life at the bottom of a goddamn bottle.”
Mom winced.
I opened my mouth to call out to Boone.
Mom shook her head.
I closed my mouth.
“You know, I didn’t ask you in here,” Brian said.
“Your sister did.”
“Are you not gettin’ that I don’t give a fuck what my sister wants?”
“Yeah, I got that before your sister did.”
I winced.
Mom held tight to my hand.
“You know, bud,” Boone started, “I don’t know what it is that brought you to this place, but you better take stock. Because those two women dropped everything to be here when they heard what happened to you. No, what you did to yourself. They dropped everything to get here to see you were okay and take your back. I will never in my life forget the look on Ryn’s face when she looked up at me and told me her brother had been in an accident. Never forget it. Because that look tore a hole in my goddamned soul.”
I squeezed my eyes tight.
Brian had no response to that.
I opened my eyes again when Boone kept talking.
“And if you don’t sort your shit out, the next time this or something like it goes down, if it doesn’t end in tragedy one way or another, they aren’t gonna bother. And you can try to convince yourself you won’t miss it, but if you make that shit happen, you’ll torture yourself for losing them for the rest of your goddamn days.”
With that, he turned and scorched me with his eyes.
“Baby, I would really like you to leave this room with me,” he said.
“Go,” Mom encouraged. “I’ll talk to your brother.”
I did not want to leave my mother alone with Brian.
But at the expression on her face, and the emotion I felt coming from Boone, I nodded and stood.
Boone held out his hand.
I moved to him and took it but stopped and looked to Brian.
“I love you so fucking much,” I whispered.
Brian’s head jerked to the side with the power of his flinch.
“Please, get yourself well,” I finished.
And then Boone pulled me out of the room.
* * *“Porter bought me a Samsung. It talks to me. He thinks it’s everything. But I don’t know why a fridge needs to talk to you,” Anne-Marie said to my mother.
“I really don’t understand what a fridge needs to do outside keeping food cold,” Mom said to Anne-Marie. “A friend of mine bought one of these, it costs over five thousand dollars. And it doesn’t even dispense water.”