The people walk around as though they don’t see anyone else. Everything is a rush.
And the rain. It’s something else.
To be honest, the weather fits our collective mood. Everything feels gray now we’re not with Luna. We’ve lost our purpose and left pieces of our hearts behind.
Even a shopping trip for tacky souvenirs doesn’t cheer us up. It’s on the biggest shopping street in London that I think I hear my voice being shouted. When I stop walking, Connor turns, and the rest of the crew slows down. “What is it?” he asks.
“Did you just hear someone shout Elijah?”
“It’s not an unusual name, dude.”
“Elijah,” I hear again, and everyone turns, searching the crowd. People stream past us, some tutting at the way we’re blocking the sidewalk.
“Come on,” Connor huffs. “They’re shouting for a British Elijah, not some American dude on vacation.”
“Is that what you call this?” I start walking but then two voices shout my name, and when I turn, I see familiar faces. For a moment, I’m frozen in place, slowly closing my eyes to wipe the weirdness from my vision. Then my brothers get close enough for me to accept that I’m not seeing things.
“What the fuck?” I mumble. The last time I saw them, they were sixteen, and I was walking away from our family. The last time we were together, they had chosen to remain part of a cult where travel outside of the compound wasn’t permitted. And here they are in London.
When they throw their arms around me, tears burn in my throat. They’re grown. The skinny teenage years have been left behind. Now they’re two huge men with beards, and eyes just like mine.
“Elijah. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I counter, hugging them again and slapping them both on the back hard enough to raise interested expressions from passers-by.
“We’re traveling the world,” Isiah says.
“Enjoying the freedom we never had,” Josiah grins. “What about you?”
Glancing around my friends, I swallow down the truth. “We were working, and now we’re on vacation. What are the odds that we’d be in the same place at the same time?”
“Who the fuck knows.” Josiah runs his hand over his beard. “You’re looking good, man. Old but good.”
There was always a rivalry about the age between us. They hated the fact that I was two years older and was always the one our mom trusted the most.
“Less of the old,” I laugh. “These guys are my brothers from other mothers.” I point at each of my friends in turn, introducing them to my flesh-and-blood brothers who have been strangers for too many years.
“Shall we go and grab a drink somewhere,” Connor says. “I want to try some Irish beer if we can find it. And I reckon if we don’t move, we’re going to get knocked out by a raging Brit for blocking the ‘pavement.’” He uses his fingers to make air-quotes around the word Londoners use for sidewalk. We’ve been trying to pick up the differences in language as something to improve our mood. It hasn’t worked.
Hudson pulls out his phone, already on the case. “With Google, anything is possible,” he says, but it’s not true. Google can’t give us back Luna, and that’s the only thing I really want.
It takes us ten minutes to find an Irish bar, or as the Brits call it, a pub. It takes another ten minutes to get served and receive our drinks. Thankfully, there is a table free at the back and, as we all take a seat, I feel strangely awkward.
My friends are like oil, and my brothers like water. They’ve never mixed before, and now we’re in the same place at the same time, I feel trapped between them, not really sure which version of myself to be. They’re not that different beneath the surface though. I’m hoping that some time spent together will iron out any creases.
“So, where are you guys staying?” I ask to break the silence that’s settled over our group.
“A hostel in Kings Cross. It’s basic and expensive but the cheapest we could find. What about you?”
“We’ve got rooms in a chain hotel. Nothing fancy,” I say. I don’t tell them about the penthouse and VIP suites we’ve been staying in or our travels around the world. They don’t need to know about Luna at all and to be honest, talking about her would be like picking open a wound. “You gonna share what happened…how come you’ve left the family?”
Josiah nods, taking a sip of beer, which leaves white foam in his blond beard. “Same as you, brother. We got to an age when we realized that there wasn’t anything for us there.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t marry you off by now,” I say.
“They tried, but we grew up with those girls. They all felt more like sisters than potential brides, and we didn’t love them. What kind of marriage isn’t built on love?”
“My parents only met once before they married,” Mo says, sipping his Coke through a straw. “They’re happy together.”
“I guess it can work some of the time,” I say. “But I get where you’re coming from. I wish I’d known, but I couldn’t get in touch with you. I tried, and Dad would always put the phone down. I just believed that I was never going to see you again.”
“We didn’t take it personally, El,” Isiah says. “We knew you weren’t leaving us; you were leaving the life. We knew you were doing the right thing for you.”
“It was hard to leave everyone behind,” I say. “I used to dream I was home, and then I’d wake up in some dusty tent in Iraq and wonder how the fuck I got there.”
“We prayed that we’d find you somehow,” Josiah says, revealing that it’s not their faith that they left behind, just the restrictive lifestyle our family enforced.
“It looks like those prayers were answered,” Connor says. He holds up his glass, “To Elijah and a surprise family reunion.” We all clink glasses, but the toast is followed by another awkward silence.
“Love always finds a way to bring people together.” Isiah nods knowingly, suddenly seeming older than his years. I wish I had the same faith as him. My whole life seems to have been about leaving people I love – first my family and my friends back home, now Luna. I don’t get why holding onto love can be so hard.
“Love always finds a way to fuck you in the ass,” Jax says, tipping the rest of his beer down his throat as though he’s trying to drown his melancholy.
“Not love,” Josiah says. “It’s everything we put before love that does that.”
“Your brothers are very wise,” Mo says, nodding.
“But that’s life,” Hudson says. “There’s always something that comes to test us.”
“And what do you do when that happens?” Isiah asks.
“Whatever is best for everyone,” Hudson says.
Isiah nods knowingly, slumping back into his chair. “Our parents would say that they did that for us. They would tell whoever asked that all their decisions had the best interests of their family at heart, but they never asked us what we wanted. They never asked us how we felt. Our real wants and needs were pushed aside for what they believed we should need and want. In the process, they squashed us until we didn’t know whether we were coming or going. Elijah was the strong one. He was the first to break out of that and find his own place in the world. We waited for longer, hoping that our mom and dad would learn that they were doing wrong by losing one son. It turns out they lost all three of us and still haven’t learned.”