The Only Brother (6 page)

The great thing about Emma is that she’s very soft and cuddly. This I know because she was half on my lap on the sofa. Not like anything much was going to happen, but I wasn’t going to throw an attractive girl, pressing up against me, out the door. She also loved football and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought, so she fitted in well with Trevor, Bobby and the rest of Trevor’s hoodlums and pals.

Trevor ignored the plastic bottle – thrown by Emma – banging into his head. He was too busy watching Ameobi blazing down the pitch to notice Emma’s glare.

‘Trev, how could you maim the boy like this?’ Emma brushed away a loose strand and hovered her fingers over the bruise, before she went back to stroking my hair.

‘Just a mate’s fight,’ Trevor said, not even looking back. ‘He’s still prettier than me.’

‘Yes,’ Emma said, ‘yes he is.’ And she continued her gentle stroking.

I could get used to this. And I keep on hearing Sara screaming in my head
just jump her NOW!!!
and I can barely stop laughing. Emma took this to be solely her work, which I had no problem with right then. I leaned in a bit and watched Newcastle’s Ameobi backpedal with the ball, keeping it out of Sunderland’s reach.

Melanie, Neil’s girl, handed the plastic bottle back to Emma. Emma hurled it,
cap-end
-first, once again catching Trevor square in the head. Trevor finally spun around.

‘Look, it’s over and everyone is OK with…’

Trevor suddenly snapped back to the telly. ‘Go go go go go go – YES!!!’ he roared as Ameobi rocketed the ball past the Sunderland keeper. Everyone joined him in cheering Newcastle’s second goal of the game.

Neil, a lanky salesman for an electronics store, immediately sent a text to taunt his brother, a die-hard Sunderland fan. Bobby and his younger brother George punched each other while singing the long version of ‘The Blaydon Races’ with extra curses.

And as always, I just took it all in. This time though, I was in the middle of it, rather than sitting outside. Part of the action instead of just watching it and wondering why I wasn’t included. I thought back, through the better filter I now had since talking to my doctor, and realised that part of it wasn’t just people ignoring me or hating me. Some of it was how I reacted, or overreacted a lot of the time. People didn’t want to deal with the drama, with the way I’d get angry when things didn’t pan out right.

I mean, it wasn’t
all
my fault. But some of it was, and that was mostly down to the way I reacted to things. Looking back, even to stuff when I was young, I could see where I went wrong on some things. Some of it was damn stupid, too.

My phone rang. Trevor had it – he’d said he needed to call someone earlier, but it couldn’t be from his phone. Trevor held the phone out to me without looking at it, but pulled it away every time I grabbed for it. I managed to get it away from him after Emma slapped his hand.

Dad.

I had half a mind just to shut the phone off, or scream at him, but I remembered what I’d just been thinking about.

‘Excuse me,’ I said as I slid Emma off me and found a quiet hallway near the stairs. ‘Hello,’ I said calmly.

‘Andrew, where in God’s name are you?’

It was my dad alright, his voice going from Zero to Yelling in two point two seconds. I held the phone away, taking a moment to think of what to say next.

‘I’m OK, Dad. I’m out with friends.’

‘You really need to come home now.’ He lowered his yelling voice to ‘very concerned’, the one all parents use to trick their kids.

Or maybe he
was
concerned. Don’t assume he’s out to get you, I thought. I paused again before I spoke.

‘That’s not going to happen. I’m safe somewhere, and I’ll be home sometime soon. Tomorrow, during the day.’

‘Don’t you use that tone with me!’

I thought about it, pretty sure I didn’t use any ‘tone’. He was angry, and had a pretty good reason to be too, since I’d clocked him. I needed to head this off.

‘Dad, put Mum on.’

‘Your mum is very upset and in no condition to talk to you! You need to get home…’

‘Dad, either give the phone to Mum or I will be ending this call.’

Silence.

I continued, taking a breath first.

‘I’m willing to discuss all this another time,’ I said, being careful with the words, ‘but right now I need to be here, where I am. I’m safe at a friend’s place, and I’m going to be staying overnight. Now put Mum on and I will try to calm her down.’

Silence, then sobbing.

‘Mum?’

‘Andrew,’ a voice broke over the phone.

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘just letting you know I’m somewhere safe, OK?’

More crying. Just as bad as at William’s funeral, actually.

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘just breathe in deep a few times, and then we’ll talk, OK?’

The crying continued, followed by a few wheezing breaths. When I was sure she was listening again, I started speaking.

‘Mum, like I said, I’m safe. I’m with some friends and I’m going to be here the night, OK.’

Some sniffling over the phone again.

‘I need this time away,’ I said. ‘It’s been rough for everyone. There’s stuff we’re all going to have to talk about. But right now isn’t a good time for that. So I’m going to come back tomorrow and we’re going to sit down and talk about things, OK?’

‘OK,’ Mum managed to push out.

‘Just tell Dad I’m safe, inside, and that Newcastle just got a second goal.’

Mum laughed. Dad probably already knew, since he was such a fan. Shit though – he’d called during the game. He never let anything interrupt a Newcastle game. No emails, no phone calls… once, he’d made a director of a technology company watch the game with him while they worked on product guidelines. When I was younger we watched football all the time. Once, we went to Highbury to see Newcastle play Arsenal – that was William, Dad and me. Later on, when William was in the hospital, we’d sit and talk about the team, and that was about the only time we talked. It was one of the things Dad and I used to get away from everything that hurt. We’d just turn to football and hope for the best for William. It never lasted long, spending time with Dad, but it did happen.

There was good stuff. But it takes some digging and thinking about, and things happening, to bring it all out. But there was good stuff going on in our lives. Like the Newcastle games, and this dinner we had in Spain where the waiters went around with a pitcher of wine and poured it right into your mouth until you couldn’t drink any more.
Dad drank the whole thing and they had to bring a second one out, which he got halfway through before he had to come up for air.

‘I’ll let him know,’ Mum said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘He shut the game off when he called you.’

‘Mum?’

‘Yes?’

‘We’ll work this out, OK?’

‘I love you, Andrew,’ she said, and that was the end of the call.

I’ve never been one to say ‘I love you’ or things like that. I think the only person I ever
said
it to was Sara, and even that caught her off guard. I always want to hear it, and I certainly feel it. However I just don’t usually say it though. I’d rather
do
stuff to show that I care about people. Some people just say it easily, and meanwhile they’re running around on their boyfriends and girlfriends, talking about them behind their backs, or trying to
mess up their lives. That’s not love or caring about someone. That’s playing a game.

The phone rang again.

‘Mum, I said I’d be home tomorrow…’

‘Do I sound like your mother?’ Sara said with a laugh.

This is what I get for not looking at the screen before answering; Sara’s number was flashing on the display.

‘Hey baby doll!’

‘Greetings from the past!’ she yelled at me. ‘Whatcha doing?’

‘Just off the phone with the olds. I decked my Dad earlier today.’

‘Oh my God, you OK? What happened?’

‘Just a fight. I think it passed,’ I said. ‘We’re going to talk it out tomorrow when I get home.’

‘You’re actually going to talk to your parents about real things?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Just figure it’s time to try to work this all out. I’ve been a pain in the arse to them.’

‘Maybe you have, love.’

‘Gee, thanks…’

‘What I mean is that Will’s death bothered you, too, and you never really got to talk to them about it. Or talked about his life. So it’s good if you do.’

‘Yeah. There’s stuff I can do better.’

‘We can all do stuff better,’ Sara said. ‘Anyway, what are you up to tonight?’

‘I’m at Trevor’s house. We’re watching the Newcastle game.’

‘Ooh, is that girl Emma there? You should so have sex with her and take pics.’

I smiled. It was great to have a personal cheerleader in my life.

‘I
could
do that… but I don’t think it’s that kind of thing. She does like sitting in my lap though.’

‘Damn you, I want lap-sitting!’ she pouted over the phone.

‘You can sit on my lap when you visit next…’

‘No, I meant her in my lap!’

Well, at least Sara knows what she wants… which is everything.

‘Gee, thanks…’

‘Oh, I fully intend to share her. You can have her every other weekend.’

‘And you get her all the rest of the time?’ I asked.

‘We’ll send her away so that we have
time together,’ she reassured me.

‘I love you, you know that?’ Easy for me to say to her, not so easy for me to say to anyone else.

‘Yep,’ she said cheerily. ‘So, just your soccer game today?’

‘Yes, football,’ I corrected her. ‘And a party tonight.’

‘You mean you are actually going out and interacting with people? They grow up so fast…’ She sniffed fake tears over the phone. I laughed at her.

‘You know that I actually
do
go out and do stuff, right?’

‘Yes, I know. But it’s my job to tease you about everything while hoping you take naked pictures of the girls you seduce.’

‘I’ll do what I can tonight, OK?’

‘You’d better,’ she warned, ‘or I’m just
going to have to find myself another pretty gothed-up artist to play with.’

‘I love you too.’

And this is why Sara rocks so much. A sexy drugged angel asleep in bed with a soul as strong as steel. A voice of reason when I need one, a cheerleader and biggest fan the rest of the time. That’s love and understanding.

And I realised she wasn’t the only one who felt that way about me. Trevor, and Emma… and my olds. I might not have always understood the ways they tried to care, and they might not have been good at expressing it. But if Dad was willing to shut off Newcastle United to talk to me after I’d clocked him one, maybe it was a start.

Still, at that time all I wanted was to finish watching Newcastle paste
Sunderland
, with a cute girl in my lap.

Trev’s house is pretty big, but it’s still amazing how many people he can manage to get in it. He crammed about fifty people in there, not including the people in the yard. It was a good mix of people my age – uni students, mechanics from where Trev worked, and a few older people that fitted in well with the group. Like I said before, everyone ended up liking Trevor whether they wanted to or not.

I wasn’t much for crowds, so the party was stressing me out a bit. I tried to hang around the people I knew best, like Trevor, Emma and a few others. People were friendly enough; it’s just that when the mobs of people started to wade on in, I got a bit anxious. It’s not like I thought I was going to screw up when I said stuff. Just more like not quite knowing what to say and how it was going to sound.

‘You,’ Trevor grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, ‘need to drink a bit more.’ He put a beer in my hand.

‘You’re probably right,’ I laughed.

‘Relax,’ he shook me while he talked. ‘Nothing you do here will end up on the front page of the
Daily Mail
or the police blotter. That’s reserved for me.’

‘I’m not a crowd person.’

‘I know,’ Trevor said. ‘But don’t think of it as crowds. There just happen to be a few groups of a few groups. Focus on what’s right in front of you. Like these hoodlums all the way down from Newcastle,’ Trevor dragged me over to two husky, but cute girls. ‘They go to Northumbria University and play rugby, friends of my cousins.’ He introduced me to them. ‘Teresa, Melanie, this is Andrew. He’s an artist, so don’t hurt his hands or anything.’

‘Did you punch him?’ Teresa shot Trevor a look while she reached out to the bruise on my head. I resisted the urge to pull away from a surprisingly light touch.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know… “Trevor, you punched him? You’re a damn wanker, screw
you, toss off, you bad bad man…”’ Trevor exaggerated his ranting to defuse anything the girls might be planning to say.

‘It’s OK, the boy’s tougher than he looks. Andrew, you should tell them how you popped your dad today. Have to run and finish setting something up.’

And there I was, dropped in the middle of things, just talking about stuff. And people listened, with a small crowd just getting in on things. Other people jumped in, from one of Trevor’s mates at work, talking about how he and his brother went through a plate glass window in a fight, to Teresa showing off the scar she got in a pretty nasty rugby game.

People listened to what I said, and they cracked on me too. But I didn’t get mad at the make-up cracks or the getting a ‘real man’s job’ cracks. I either let it slide or threw back at them that they were just upset because I was prettier than their girlfriends. Everyone laughed, everyone drank, everyone had fun. I just mingled,
talking to and listening to everyone, taking a little time to tease Emma a bit, and watch Trevor move an impromptu wrestling match out to the yard…

And I fitted right in.

Part of that was just relaxing, and part of it was not caring what people thought. I wouldn’t see most of these people ever again, so what did anything matter? Besides, despite years of thinking otherwise, most people weren’t actively trying to mess with my day. They couldn’t know the stuff I was going through in my life, just like I didn’t know the stuff going on in theirs.