Chapter 24

Stevie McGabe

I try to concentrate on the game that Vinnie was explaining to me and Grayson, but my eyes were drawn to the kitchen where my sister and Darryl were deep in conversation. My mind was swirling with what Darryl had just told me. Could it be true?

He had hated me all these years because he thought I thought he was defective, broken somehow—that I seriously would have abandoned him if I had known.

I had spent the last four years avoiding hearing anything about him, and I’d obviously missed out on everything to do with him being in therapy since then, and the issues he’d had with drink and drugs until he moved here, and I’d witnessed it for myself.

How could I have let him deal with this on his own for so long?

How could he not have confided in me?

The grown-ups laugh raucously at my dad and Jake rolling on the grass, fighting over a football. Gray whoops, jumping up and running over to join in the scrum, leaving me and Vinnie, who shies away from the loud noise.

“I’m going back inside,” he says softly, slipping off his seat and disappearing into the house.

Carrie pulls him in for a hug as he walks past, before making her way out to where I’m still sitting. “Hey you.”

I smile back at her as she settles back in her chair, running her hand through her short pompadour haircut to grab her sunglasses, positioning the Wayfarers on her face. “Hey, big sis. How’s tricks?”

She laughs. “Tricks are tricky as usual.”

We lapse into silence, both of us watching the adults. The tension builds in me, until I can’t hold my tongue any longer. “So, what were you and Darryl talking about?”

“Wondered how long it would take you,” she smirks at me. “He’s all cut up over a misunderstanding with someone…I wonder who that could be, huh?”

I chew the inside of my cheek as I shrug, glancing toward the house. Darryl is leaning against the wall just outside the open French doors, his arm around his mom’s shoulders as he talks to Mikey, the drummer from Ashes Within, his mom’s old band.

When Abi and Jake had taken their boys on tour, Mikey had spent hours teaching Darryl drums; he was one of Darryl’s idols growing up. “Is he okay, though?”

“Hmmm?” I look back to Carrie, who is frowning down at her cell phone. “Yeah, he’s fine, but I do think the two of you need to talk properly.”

“Why? What did he say?” Carrie agitatedly swipes the screen of her phone, turning it over and slamming it down face first on the table with a growl.

“Nothing really, but I know you both too well to know it’s about your relationship, or lack thereof. As much as you have protested over the years, I know you are still harboring some deep feelings for him, and I think now is the time for you both to get over it.”

Her phone chimes, then chimes again. She rolls her eyes as she picks it back up and reads the messages. “I’ve gotta go.”

“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah…just a friend needs something.”

She gets up and gives me a hug before waving goodbye to everyone else. I watch as she walks to her car, pressing her phone to her ear as she does. There was something going on with her that she wasn’t talking about with me.

She was nine years older than me and had followed in our mom’s footsteps doing accounting at college and now worked at the building merchant’s that our grandfathers had started, which our mom now ran.

Since she had lived on her own, I saw her infrequently, even though she still lived in the same city as us. I guess working with mom every day made it feel like she was still keeping in touch, but I did miss the time I used to spend with my big sister.

Rhea texts me, asking if I wanted to go and see some movie with her and her little brother, Angelo. I feel the weight of someone looking at me, and when I raise my eyes, Darryl is looking at me. Color rises in his cheeks as he quickly drops his gaze, and I tap out my answer to her.

I’m in, come pick me up and I’ll love you forever ~ S~

***

“So, he fooled around with that girl because he thought everyone expected him to, you got upset because he was your first love and you thought you would be his too, he got upset because he thought you dumped him when you found out he was in therapy which you never knew anything about, and you both ended up hating each other for the last four years for no actual reason.”

Rhea takes a deep suck on the straw to her milkshake, the beeping of the arcade games starting to give me a headache as we waited for Angelo to finish up playing some loud shooting thing. I nod with a slight cringe.

“Well, fuck, dude…looks like it was a whole lotta nothing and you should just go jump his bones like you always wanted to.”

I burst out laughing at my friend’s blunt words. “I wish it was that simple, Rhea.”

“It is that simple. You are trying to make it more difficult,” she shrugs. “Even though you thought he was a douche-nugget since you were fourteen, you have still been in love with him.

And don’t even try to start bullshitting me. He was all you ever talked about when we first became friends.”

She breaks off to shout some encouragement at Angelo, and I let my eyes roam over her eclectic outfit for today.

She was wearing what looked to be her little brother’s wrestling leotard over a My Little Pony t-shirt, which I’m sure she was wearing in a family photo proudly displayed on the mantelpiece of her house from when she was eight, covered in her fluffy pink and white dressing gown, black and white Chucks laced up with neon green laces on her feet.

I loved Rhea, but she was so blasé about what she wore it sometimes drove me insane. She would literally roll out of bed and put on whatever she laid her hands on.

One day she rocked up to school wearing her dad’s suit because it happened to be hanging on the back of the bathroom door that morning.

But maybe she was right; even at the height of my loathing of Darryl, the thought of him coming begging and apologizing to me sparked a little hope in the back of my brain, and on more than one occasion I had heated dreams starring him and I.

Angelo finally exhausts his supply of quarters, and we head home. Rhea beeps her horn as she drives off, and I notice Darryl’s curtains twitch a little when I turn round to walk up the driveway. Someone was definitely snooping!

By the time I have made it up to my bedroom, I have forgotten about his window, pulling my dress off over my head as I walk into my room, freezing when I realize his curtains are wide open now, and he is standing in the middle of his room wearing only a towel.

My top drops onto the floor as my eyes drag over his toned chest and defined arms. It’s only as I watch him drag his lower lip between his teeth that I remember that I am standing in full view of him too, wearing nothing but my underwear.

I glance down at myself. Phew! At least it is a decent set.

Darryl steps closer to the window, and I can’t help but mirror his movement. He cocks his head to one side, and I see the top of his towel slip away.

Before I can see anything, I whirl around, blindly feeling for my curtains and pulling them shut, my heart feeling like it’s about to burst right through my chest with how hard it’s pounding. What was that!?