Incomplete (7 page)

“All of them,” I grind out, clenching and unclenching my hands. One guy puts his lips on Lily’s and I will want to kill him, I know I will. At the very least I
will
cause tremendous bodily harm. “I’m going with you and there will be
no
kissing with
any
boy. Got it?”

“Not even you?” she asks innocently.

I close my eyes and grit my teeth. “Not even me,” I say from between my teeth.

“You seem jealous. Are you jealous?”

I rear back, my eyes popping open. “I—
no
.”

Lily’s eyes sparkle with amusement. “Are you sure? You’re really not jealous?”

This is beyond jealousy. This is all-out, maddeningly consuming fury at the thought of any guy besides me touching her. It just isn’t going to happen. I know it’s ridiculous to think it won’t ever happen, but I have to think it’s true, or I will seriously lose my mind. I have to lie to myself just to get through every day without going insane.

I cannot imagine
her loving some other guy, kissing him, letting him touch her, marrying him, having his babies, growing old with him, because that guy—he’s supposed to be me. I know it like I know my own name. If we lived in a different world, it would be so.

When I continue to stare at her in stoic silence,
she laughs. “Let’s get some breakfast. My treat.” She walks toward the front door of her house. “Meet me here in twenty, okay?” Lily opens the door and disappears inside the house without waiting for me to answer.

I’m drying off from my shower when I hear the voices. I pause with the towel to my head, straining my ears to make out the words. My heartbeat picks up. She shouldn’t even be up yet. Why is she up?

“…me to do anything…act like…even here…” my mom shouts.

“…because you….here…never…a part of…”

I quickly tug on my boxers, shove my glasses on my face, and fling the door open, cool air pebbling my skin after the heat of the bathroom. I race toward Aidan’s room, the voices from downstairs louder in the hallway. He’s sitting on his bed, staring down at an unopened book. I strive for a calmness I don’t feel as I sit on the edge of his bed.

“Hey.”

He looks up, his eyes immediately shifting from mine. “Hey.”

“Why don’t you get dressed? Lily wants you to eat breakfast with us.” The fact that he had a bowl of cereal about an hour ago means nothing to an eleven-year old.

Aidan’s eyes brighten. “Okay.” He jumps up from the bed and digs through his dresser drawers, pausing to say, “Where are your clothes?”

“Waiting for me in my room.”

He laughs at that, tugging a long-sleeved red shirt over his head.

“Did you brush your teeth?”

Aidan makes a face. “No.”

“You better. You don’t want to offend Lily with your puke breath.”

“I don’t have puke breath,” he grumbles, but I know he’ll brush his teeth now. Aidan has a crush on Lily. Not that I blame him—it’s entirely too easy to do.

I go to my room and throw on a pair of jeans and a brown shirt with a black and
gray-striped jacket over that before I thunder down the stairs with my jaw clenched.

They’re in the kitchen, standing on either side of the island. Tracie Lee’s blond hair is wild
and matches her eyes. A white bathrobe knotted tightly at the waist makes up her outfit. My dad’s arms are crossed over his chest, the look on his face a mixture of sorrow and anger. He is more presentable as he is actually dressed, wearing jeans and a blue shirt.

The kitchen is spacious, painted an apple red with white cabinets and wood floor. Some of my best memories took place in this room; cooking with Dad,
food experiments with Aidan, baking cookies with Lily. That all became less frequent as the years went by. It saddens me. I want that little bit of happiness in this house back.

“What’s going on?” I demand, trying not to look
at my mom. Her face is swollen and her eyes are red. With every year that passes she appears to age about five.

“Your dad was just telling me how the three of you are going to play basketball. Good for the three of you. Glad you’re such a team,” she says sarcastically, clutching a coffee mug between her hands.

“Your mom is feeling left out, even though she doesn’t play basketball, and she’s usually still in bed at this time anyway,” my dad says, glaring at his wife.

“That’s a stupid thing to argue about and Aidan can hear you.” I point to the stairs. “Maybe you should think about him the next time you decide to shout at each other over something so ridiculous.” I’ve said this before and it didn’t help.
Nor will it help now. That isn’t even what they’re really arguing about. They obviously hate each other and bicker about anything.

I shift my jaw back and forth, wanting to race up the stairs, grab my brother, and get the hell out of this place and never come back. I eye the coffee mug as my mom lifts it to her lips. I know it’s laced with whatever liquor she found first. She freezes when she sees me watching her, looking away with guilt etched into
her washed-out features that used to be pretty.

“You guys ready?”

I turn to my dad. “Uh…can we postpone it about an hour? Lily and I are going to take Aidan out for breakfast.”

He frowns slightly, probably at the thought of being left alone in the house with his wife. “Sure.”

“Grayson, I thought maybe we could do something later today? After you play ball with your dad, I mean.” A glint of hope makes my mom’s dull blue eyes almost shine.

“Wouldn’t you rather just drink?”

Her face falls at the same time my dad says warningly, “Grayson.”

I swing around to glare at him. “What? It’s not like it isn’t true.”

Aidan stumbles down the stairs, edging warily into the kitchen. His big brown eyes go from my dad to my mom to me. I set my features as blank as I can and offer a small smile. His shoulders relax.

“Hi, honey,” my mom says, moving to hug him.

She doesn’t try to hug me anymore. The last time she attempted it she was drunk and I flung her arm away. She hasn’t tried since so I guess she was lucid enough to remember the incident. That was three years ago.

“Ready, Aidan?” My voice is cooler than I mean it to be, but Aidan doesn’t seem to notice. He leaves my mom’s arms and moves to the door, waving to our dad before walking through the door.

I follow him out.

I don’t know all the details of my mother and father’s union. I know they met, obviously had sex, and she became pregnant with me. I know they thought the right thing to do was to get married. I know they were wrong. Whether they ever really loved each other, whether they
love each even a little bit at all, is what I don’t know.

I know my father works as an accountant and I know my mom used to work as a beautician, but never went back after having Aidan. I know any kind of work is beyond her now at this point. She cannot function
with or without her booze.

Logically I know I shouldn’t hate myself. I hate my mom, but I still hate myself a little. If it wasn’t for me, maybe they wouldn’t have married and maybe she wouldn’t be a drunk and maybe Aidan
wouldn’t be so sad all the time and maybe everyone would be happier. Except for me, because I wouldn’t exist. I was the mistake, the oops, the thing that changed everything for the worse.

I swear Lily knows exactly what I’m thinking because the first words she says to me are, “Stop it.
Right now.”

She’s got on skinny jeans, a long gray sweater, and pink and blue polka dot
shoes that look like ballet slippers. I stare at her shoes, trying to determine what exactly they are, when Lily yanks me to her and pulls me into her arms. I hug her to me, inhaling her strawberry-scented hair, and briefly close my eyes. Each hug of hers is a little piece of me given back to myself.

“Gross,” Aidan quips from behind us.

Lily laughs, dropping her arms from me. “I think you need a hug too, Aidan.” She leans down and hugs Aidan, messing up his hair as she straightens.

Aidan doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are shining as we get into my car.

***

“They don’t have asparagus,” I tell Lily, making a sad face as I set the menu down on the red and white-checkered vinyl tablecloth.

“Ha ha, funny.”

We’re sitting in a red vinyl booth at Red Rooster Diner. Red seems to be the theme, along with roosters, which explains the name. It’s an inexpensive restaurant that has a slightly worn, but homey look to it. The seats have cracks in the vinyl and the walls are faded red and white-striped. The smell of coffee and onions and bacon permeate through the small room, somehow enticing all mixed together as they are.

“I don’t like asparagus,” Aidan says across the booth.

“You’re in luck then.”

“Me either, buddy, me either,” Lily tells him. “We non-lovers of asparagus have got to stick together, right?”

“Right.”
Aidan nods; high-fiving the hand Lily lifts to him.

I look from Aidan to Lily. “I pity the day you two realize you could have been way cooler had you only liked asparagus.”

Lily snorts. “That day shall never come, FYI.”

“What’s ‘FYI’ mean?” Aidan asks, slurping chocolate milk through a straw.

“Frogs yawn, incidentally,” I spout off, those the first words that come to mind.

Lily rolls her eyes at me, turning to Aidan.
“For your information.”

“Your eyes are so close to being stuck like that it isn’t funny. One more roll of the eyes and you’re done for, I know it.” I take a sip of my coffee, winking at her when she scowls at me.

The waitress, a fifty-ish lady with an overabundance of curves and short curly brown hair, stops at the booth. She’s wearing a customary Red Rooster Diner tee shirt and black pants. Her name is Sally and she’s worked here as long as I have lived in Fennimore.

“Ready to order, kiddos?”

“What do you want?” Lily asks Aidan, bumping him with her arm.

Aidan’s face turns red and he looks at Lily, silently asking for help. He is terribly shy with people he doesn’t know well, namely anyone but my parents and me, and outside of our house, Lily.

“Whisper it to me,” she encourages, tipping her head toward him. My heart clenches as I watch them; the two people I love most.

Aidan puts his hand to her ear. Sally raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug. If that’s how Aidan wants to order, then that’s how he’ll order.

“Pancakes,” Lily says definitively when Aidan sits back. “And an orange, just to balance it out.” She smiles at me and my stomach swoops.

“I don’t want an orange,” Aidan denies.

“I’ll eat the orange. But maybe you can help me eat it if I get too full?”

He thinks about this, slowly nodding. “Okay.”

The power of this female over the Lee boys is phenomenal
, I think, shaking my head when Lily laughs.

We finish ordering
and Sally takes the menus away.

“Have you written anything lately?” Lily asks,
trying to appear casual, but ruining it by the eager gleam in her eyes.

I rub the back of my head and look at the table. “Not lately, no,” I lie. I lie because the last song I wrote is one I can’t share with anyone, not even Lily—
especially
not Lily.

“You’re lying.” My eyes fly to her face. Lily shrugs. “You should know by now not to even try it. I mean, sometimes I forget when you’re lying to me because the words you say make me so blindingly
furious
, but I totally know you’re lying right now. I just have to separate my brain from my emotions to focus on what you’re saying to realize it. Like I know you—“

“Okay. You’re right. I lied,” I hurriedly cut in, not wanting Lily to list all the ways I’ve recently lied to her in front of my little brother.

Aidan’s mouth is hanging open. “You
lie
? To
Lily
?”

“I know. He should be stoned for committing such atrocious acts.” Lily glares at me across the booth, kicking my leg beneath it.

I don’t take my eyes from Lily’s as I answer, “Sometimes, Aidan, you have to lie to people, not because you want to hurt them, but because if you don’t lie, they will ultimately be hurt
more
.”

Lily’s eyes widen. She ducks her head and when she raises it, there are tears shining in her eyes as she says, “Sometimes, Aidan, no matter how much it hurts, people need to know the truth.”

“Fair enough,” I say evenly, my eyes not leaving hers. In them I see confliction, sorrow, and something I do not want to see, so I force my eyes away, swallowing thickly.

“I’m going to wear something slutty tonight,” she announces.

I choke on my coffee, reaching for the glass of water and gulping some down. “What?” I croak, blinking my burning eyes.

“She said she’s going to wear something slutty tonight,” Aidan helpfully supplies.

I give Aidan a glower before turning it on Lily. She looks innocently back. “First of all, you don’t
own
slutty clothes, and second of all,
why
would you say that? Why would you
do
that?”

“I’m being truthful.” Lily shrugs, smiling at Sally as she sets a plate of eggs, bacon, and hash browns with a peeled orange on a smaller plate before her.

“That’s not funny,” I snap, stabbing my scrambled eggs with a fork. They’re hot and burn my tongue, but I stoically chew them up and swallow before taking a drink of water.

“I wasn’t joking.”

“
Why?
” I repeat angrily.

I kind of have the feeling Lily has been doing things she wouldn’t normally do just to push me. I don’t know why and I don’t know what she’s hoping to accomplish by it, other than making me severely pissed off.

She shrugs again and I grind my teeth together. “I feel like trying something new,” is her cryptic response.

“You want to try something new? Eat asparagus.” I take a particularly hard bite out of my buttered toast and bite my lip, cursing at the sharp pain.

Aidan, a chunk of dark hair sticking up from the side of his head like a wing and syrup on his face, repeats questioningly, “Asshat?”

“Don’t repeat what I say,” I tell him darkly.

“If it’s something I can’t repeat, then why would you say it?” he asks, frowning.