Better Than People (Garnet Run 1)

“I am. Happy.”

“It’s that guy, right? The dog walker? The shy guy?”

“Simon.”

“I want to meet him. Properly.”

Jack snorted.

“Okay, Dad.”

If he hadn’t been looking at Charlie he would’ve missed the expression of pure hurt that flickered there for a moment before his brother shrugged, turned away, and walked out of the room.

Why did I do that? Why do I always do that?

Grabbing his crutches, he followed Charlie. He found him in the kitchen, removing groceries from the thin plastic Albertsons bags that Jack used to pick up dog poop on walks.

“Charlie. I... Sorry.”

Charlie shrugged again, but his movements were stiff and jerky as he began to put things away.

“Dammit, I’ve told you a hundred times I can do that myself. I have a broken leg, I’m not helpless!”

Charlie spun around, cheeks flushed and mouth tight with anger.

“You’ve never been helpless in your goddamn life, Jack! I know that. I’m putting away your fucking groceries, not trying to give you a sponge bath. Why won’t you just let me do this for you?”

He was yelling now, looming over Jack.

“I don’t get why you even want to! You care about where my popcorn goes all of a sudden?!”

Charlie slammed a meaty fist into the cabinet and the wood cracked. Mayonnaise, who’d been slinking in through the cat door, bolted.

“I fucking care that for the last year you’ve been a zombie! I care that you’ve been miserable and hurt and depressed and you wouldn’t even talk to me! You’ve shut out every single person who cares about you, including me.”

Charlie’s clenched fist dripped blood on the floor.

“Charlie...”

“I’ve always been there for you. Always. And you...” Charlie’s voice went rough, his shoulders slumped.

Jack’s chest was hollow and his throat dry. He’d seen Charlie cry twice since childhood. Once when they’d buried their parents and once in the middle of the night, when Charlie didn’t know he was watching. He’d gotten up to use the bathroom, seen the light on in their parents’ room, and crept down the hallway to see Charlie sitting at their mother’s dressing table staring into space, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“You have. I know that.” Guilt at his ingratitude swallowed him.

“I don’t have anyone else.” Charlie’s voice was so low, so choked, that Jack thought he must have misheard him.

“What?”

Charlie made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat.

“You’ve always had friends. People like you, even though you’re such a moody bastard. I...” Charlie shrugged, but it wasn’t a casual gesture, it was an awkward clench of his huge shoulders. “People don’t like me,” he said, turning to the sink to wash off his bloody hand.

“What? That’s stupid. Of course they do.”

Charlie had been on the football team, he’d dated cheerleaders, he was the head counselor at camp. He was strong and handsome and confident; he always had been.

Charlie shook his head.

“No.”

“What about everyone at the store? They worship you.”

Charlie snorted. “They’re my employees. And they worship my ability to cite aisle and bin on every size of nail, not my sparkling personality.”

“What about the whole football team?”

“The football team...in high school? Bro, I’m thirty-five. I haven’t talked to those guys in almost twenty years.”

“But not because they didn’t like you. Because—”

Jack had been about to say, Because you didn’t keep up with them. Then he realized when the chance to keep up would’ve come. In the year after their parents’ death. The year Charlie was keeping their house together, and paying the bills from insurance money, and cooking and...taking care of him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie said. “Never mind.” He made a move to put away a jar of peanut butter then snatched his hand back like he’d been burned.

“You can put them away. It’s fine.”

“You sure know how to make a guy feel loved,” Charlie said wryly.

But he put the peanut butter in the cabinet.

“Charlie.”

His brother’s movements weren’t awkward anymore. They were the fluid, coordinated ballet of someone who was used to working with his body. The movements of someone who used the world outside of him to escape the one within.

“Charlie. I do love you. You know that. Right?”

Charlie paused for too long.

“Sure. Me too.”

Charlie stacked cans of beans in the cabinet, turning each one label out.

“You can meet him. Simon. We’ll come to dinner? Okay?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I want you to meet him. Properly,” Jack added, with a wink.

Charlie ducked his chin and nodded.

“Okay. Thanks.”

And though he’d said it to drive the hurt from his brother’s face, Jack found that he really did want Simon to meet Charlie.

* * *

Simon, however, proved far less enthusiastic when Jack invited him.

First he froze. Then he nodded manically. Then he got very pale and very quiet.

“We don’t have to,” Jack said into the charged silence. But given the way he’d clearly hurt Charlie, Jack knew he didn’t sound sincere.

Simon shook his head just as manically as he’d nodded it before, clearly frustrated.