While Brooks had withstood years of my father using me as a weapon over him, either by making me a saint or a villain, it’s clear that this past year, Brooks started to doubt me. There were entries that Brooks would write after talking to our father. Apparently, Dad was telling Brooks that I was talking crap about him.
Dad told me tonight that Stone is fueled by jealousy over my success. He told me that Stone wants what I now have and that he can’t stand me for having it. He said Stone hated me for being in the pros… that Stone blamed me for his inability to make it back up. None of that seems like Stone, but Dad is insistent.
They were flat-out lies my father was telling in his efforts to keep injecting that poison. I know Brooks couldn’t see it, but my father did it for purely self-serving reasons. Brooks’s star was now on the rise, mine had been snuffed out, and my dad knew the one person Brooks loved the most was me. My dad knew if he could remove me, then he would have Brooks all to himself.
The thing that hurt was that Brooks started to believe it.
Stone is so standoffish, it makes me wonder if all the things Dad has been telling me are true. It’s hard for me to believe that, but I don’t talk to Stone enough these days to know otherwise. We’re trying to find some free time so we can get together, but I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.
I can’t blame Brooks for his doubts, as that lays squarely on my shoulders as a failure to make things right.
Still clutching the purple journal, I move over to the window and look down onto the city street below. Rush hour is in progress, and I’m going to have to step it up if I want to finish this journal and make it over to the arena in time for practice.
I walk back across the room and lay the notebook on the dresser next to the framed photo of me and Brooks. My eyes locked onto that photo several times throughout the night. Sometimes I found myself talking to it, wondering out loud how things got so fucked up between us, even though the answer was right there in the words I was reading.
Flipping through the last few pages, I see the journal entries end in January of this year, and I’m just starting November. Knowing I’m getting short on time to get to the arena, I skim the words, looking for anything that sticks out that could be important to add to the overall story I’ve pieced together so far.
Really, searching for more tidbits that Brooks was happy when he died. That maybe he’d found love, or he wasn’t buying into Dad’s lies about me.
Something that would ease this anger that has been rekindled toward my father and seems to be on a low, threatening simmer. I need something to turn the heat down.
I flip until I hit this past Christmas Eve. What catches my eye is that the entry is short, the pen strokes deep and angry. Brooks had gone home for Christmas, only having the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth available. I actually had more days available, but being home was the last place I wanted to be. While I can’t remember her last name, I shacked up with a woman named Cherry who I hooked up with now and again in Cleveland.
My eyes move along the words.
I think I’m done with Stone and this battle to win our father’s approval. I don’t get it because his approval isn’t all that special, yet Stone continues to throw me under the bus with Dad. I guess he figures if Dad’s wrath is focused on me, it can’t be focused on him. I don’t get why he’s doing this, but it’s making sense. Stone hardly reaches out to me anymore, which sucks because while my dad’s attention isn’t what I’d like, it’s better than nothing.
With every word, my skin gets hotter and hotter. I can actually feel a sweat on my forehead by the time I finish the last sentence. My dad had driven that wedge so deeply between Brooks and me that my brother felt my father’s brand of love was better than nothing.
In the end… he’d thought I was nothing to him.
My chest burns with something akin to the fires of hell, and my hands shake uncontrollably. I stand there, staring at my hands as they rest against the journal, quivering like I’ve been electrocuted.
I’m not pissed. It’s not even anger sweeping through me. Not fury. It’s something dark and insidious, and I want to claw at my own skin just to avoid this feeling.
But I can’t, and it continues to build and build until I feel like I’m about to shatter.
“Motherfucking asshole!” I bellow, the words so loud, they sound like cannons booming throughout the room. I press my palsied hands onto the journal and with a roar, I sweep it to the left off the dresser. In its path is the framed photo of Brooks and me, caught up in my torment. It all flies so viciously, the frame smacks against the wall and obliterates into fragments of glass and wood.
I’m pissed I broke the frame, but I’m more focused on my dad and Brooks.
My dad for being such an unholy dick—a nonparent—and my brother for buying that shit. My fist strikes out at the same wall that just demolished the picture, and I hit it so hard, it knocks a hole through the drywall. Pain shoots up the bones in my hand, and I can feel my knuckles shred.
Vaguely, I hear the doorbell, but it seems so far away… so unimportant… that I ignore it.
I spin, eyes locking onto the other notebooks scattered on the bed. The ones I’d already read and that fed me Brooks’s story bit by bit. The joy, the pain, and the fucking hope that there was something good waiting for me.
Only to find out that my dad had gotten his wish and poisoned Brooks against me in the end.
Something is still banging… dull and distant. I think about punching the wall again, but that incessant thumping seems to get closer and closer, distracting me.
Then I hear a voice.
Harlow’s.
“Stone… open this damn door now.” More banging.
That’s her fist crashing against my door.
My anger doesn’t abate, but something else takes hold deep inside me, forcing my legs to move. I stumble out of the master bedroom and lurch down the hall like a drunk.
I jerk open the door, needing to bob my head backward to avoid Harlow’s fist in mid-flight.
“Jesus!” she exclaims as she takes me in, eyes round with worry. “It sounded like your place was being torn apart. Are you okay?”
Am I okay?
Fuck no.
Not okay at all.
There’s no accounting for the driving force behind my actions, but I step into Harlow, my palms to her face, and I pull her into me. I dip my head and kiss her hard, feeling my body go blissfully numb at the first touch of her lips against mine. In the back of my mind, I wonder if this is what it was like for Brooks to use alcohol to numb his pain.
The nothingness only lasts for a second, but the tempest of wrath that had hold of me a moment ago is replaced by pure lust.
Yes, this is exactly what I need.
One hand goes to her back, and I pull her in close, increasing my assault on her mouth. I have satisfaction when she returns the kiss.
Fuck… she even moans.
My other hand drops from her face to her breast, full and heavy under a very soft sweater that tickles my palms. It feels good, but I know her skin would feel better.
“Stop,” she says, tearing her mouth from mine and locking her hand around my wrist.
I look down at where she’s trying to pull my hand away, my knuckles dripping blood onto the cream yarn woven into a pattern with blues and grays.