* * *
“Dex?”
I must have fallen asleep again. That’s what I do the most. Sleep.
Ryan and Virginia are looking at me. They seem concerned, but I’m fine. I’m still in a fog of depression, but I’m fine. Always fine. I should have showered or eaten, or maybe both. I’m not sure how they got in. The only person who had a key to my house died and disowned me. My brain wants to tell them I’m fine but I stay mute.
“Dex, you need to get up.”
That’s Ryan. He’s wrong. I don’t need to do anything. Not anymore. I’m fine.
“Dex, get up, take a shower. I need to talk to you.”
That’s Virginia. She thinks I still care. She doesn’t understand that I don’t and I feel like I never will again.
“For fuck’s sake, Dex, this isn’t you! Come on, let’s move.”
There is no me anymore. I’ve been eaten alive by the monster inside me. I can't move. I can’t breathe. I can’t live. I fall back asleep, and their voices disappear.
When I wake up again, I’m alone. That’s all I ever wanted, that’s all I ever deserved. It’s fine.
* * *
I feel a man’s hands lifting me over his shoulder and wrapping me around his neck. I’m not sure whose hands though. From the little I can see, it could be Ryan or Luke. I wish it were Luke, but I doubt it. There is no linger of gin and lemon in the air. I don’t know where I’m going. I close my eyes again, abandoning my fate to whoever is here.
When I come back to consciousness, I’m leaning against a warm body under the shower. Someone is washing me. I’m still not sure who. I’ve never felt these hands on me. They don’t seem like they belong to a man.
I’m being dried off and dressed.
I’m being carried again and brought to the kitchen. It’s bright. It hurts my eyes. It hurts my soul.
“Eat.”
There’s a pathetic chicken noodle soup in front of me. I can’t bring the spoon to my mouth. I feel powerless.
I look up hesitantly.
Ryan, Ian, Virginia, and Asher are watching me. Tears fill my eyes. Virginia sits down, her wet hair framing her face. She brings the spoon to my mouth. That’s what I’m reduced to now. A grown man unable to bathe or eat by himself. Ryan squeezes Virginia’s shoulder and disappears toward my bedroom. My eyes wait for his return, avoiding my family. He comes back with his hands full of my shit, having cleaned up the only room I’ve stayed in for the past week.
* * *
Ian sits down next to his sister. She’s still trying to spoon-feed me. I can feel the lecture coming and close my eyes, letting tears run down my nose until they fall into the soup.
“Did you want some snot in your soup? You could have told me. I would have prepared it for you.” Virginia’s joke falls flat. She’s battling with her own emotions and my heart breaks seeing her that way. I don’t want her to cry for me. I don’t want her to hurt because of me. I don’t deserve her worrying for me. Her hand holding the spoon is shaking, and she sniffs a little while trying to smile at me.
“Dex, we need to talk,” Ian says. He brings his hand to mine, but I still can’t look at him.
Over twenty years of guilt is rushing up my throat. I’m too weak to run to the sink, so I swallow back the soup making its way up. I shake my head, asking him to let me be.
Virginia squeezes my other hand. “Ian, Ryan, and I have shared every secret we know about you so we could understand what’s eating at you. We needed to come to the root of the problem, why you felt so guilty, why your dad’s death is hitting you so hard. We spoke with Ellen and Emma too. You need to hear me.”
Ryan, Ian, and Asher are looking at her with encouraging eyes.
* * *
She takes a shaky breath and continues. “Me taking that first line of coke is not your fault.
Me running away is nobody’s fault but mine.
Me asking you to lie to my brother had nothing to do with you but everything to do with me wanting to hurt people around me.
You protecting Ian and trying to save me from myself, over and over again, is something you can be proud of.
I’m sorry I broke you. I’m sorry I blamed you and changed you forever. You’re still the one who saved me from selling my body. You’re still the one who brought me home. You’re still the boy I love so much, the friend who knows all my secrets. I love you so much, Dex. Come back to me.”
I sob quietly into my soup, unable to articulate a word.
“Dex, look at me.”
I shake my head. I can’t look at Ian. That’s too much for me.
“Dextyn Barclay Crawford the Third! Look. At. Me!”
I hear Ryan chuckle, and I raise my eyes to his, willing to kill him for making fun of me. That’s the first emotion other than sadness and pain I’ve felt in a while.
“A death stare. Did you see that? We’re getting somewhere,” the asshole says.
“Dex, I’m sorry that I ever questioned your loyalty,” Ian says. “If I had known that you felt that way for the last two decades, I would have said something sooner. Your faithfulness toward me? Your sacrifice? Your career? You created your life around me because my pain-in-the-ass sister ruined us and you were scared for me. I’ve been your friend since we were in diapers. I could never turn my back to you. Never. You have to let go of the guilt eating at you.”
I think over what they said and look at Ian and Virginia. I’m thankful they forced me out of bed today. I’m thankful they’re here. I’m thankful to have them in my life, but I’m exhausted and I want to go back to bed.
Asher clears his throat. “Well, now that we all love each other again, let’s talk about Grandfather.”
If there’s one thing I don’t want to talk about, it’s my father or Clay. “No.”
“You need to listen, Uncle D, because having you like this is not something we can deal with.”
I study my soup as if I’m trying to understand the physics behind the little bits of pasta floating.
“Grandfather left letters hidden in his office. To Mom, to Emma, to Ian, and to me. He asked us to take care of you. He laid out all you’d ever told him because he thought you wouldn’t share with us how you really felt if something happened to him. But something about the will doesn’t add up. Why would Grandfather ask us to take care of you if he didn’t care about you? I know it’s not about the money for you. I saw your face when you heard Clay was recognized as his only son. I know how it feels to be rejected by your own father. I assure you those letters were not written by a man who wanted to hurt you. I don’t believe it, and that’s not the Johanan Crawford we all knew.”
“I agree,” Virge adds.
“But you know who would do or say something like that? Your mother and your brother,” Asher says.
“There’s no reason to think the will has been tampered with. Everything looks right and tampering with a will is pretty difficult,” I whisper. As a lawyer, that was the first thing that came to my mind, but I don’t see how they could have done it. I racked my brain for hours before falling apart. Another thing I couldn’t fix. Another thing I didn’t predict.