“Then I’ll have the paperwork drawn up and brought to us,” my agent said.
I could hear the relief in her voice as she dialed a number on her phone, but I felt the relief in my bones as I closed my eyes and allowed the salted ocean water wind to blow through the broken windows.
I found it, you guys. I finally found it.
Chapter 3
Bryan
I threw back another shot of whiskey as I growled at the burn. The amber liquid swirled down into my stomach, tainting my vision as my bones went lax against the bar. I dreamed about my brother all night last night. I saw his smile and felt his hugs. I remembered our trips to the beach and how he loved body-surfing back into the shore. I dreamed about us running along the beach as adults, keeping our bodies in shape as we laughed about all the shit we had to do in the coming days. I dreamed about what it would’ve been like to have him own the company alongside Drew and me.
I owed my entire recuperation to Drew. That man pulled me from the brink of insanity when I lost my brother. He was there the night my parents called me, the night the hospital contacted them and told them he’d overdosed. Drew sped through red lights and outran a police car to get me to the hospital before he later had to pull me away from my brother’s dead body. I had thrown myself at him. Picked him up from underneath the white sheet and held his limp body close to mine. I could still remember how pale his skin was and how he had already begun to turn gray as his eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling.
Drew had run into the room and peeled me from his body.
Drew had been there during the funeral, patting my back throughout the entire ceremony. He carried my brother’s casket up and down the aisle and rode with me to the burial site. He stayed with me that day and got shitfaced drunk while I screamed about my parents not even attending the funeral.
Then, he cleaned up my house and put away the countless dying flowers and Tupperware containers of food as I snored drunkenly on my couch.
I owed Drew a great deal for my sanity. He had pulled me from the brink more times than I could count. When I wasn’t mentally stable enough to run our construction company, he stepped in and temporarily took over. He coordinated building sites and continued to hire the homeless people to help them get back on their feet. Not a beat was missed while I was grieving the loss of my brother, and it was all thanks to him.
My best friend.
I came back to reality and saw another full shot glass in front of me. The amber liquid was calling to me, even though I was seeing double. I brought it to my lips and threw it back, grimacing as it went down hard. I wanted to drink until my memory couldn’t think back any longer. I wanted to drink until I could convince myself that John died around people who loved him. I no longer wanted to think about how he died alone, cold, on the streets with an insane amount of heroin in his system. I didn’t want to think about how empty his hands were, with no one to hold him as he slipped from this earth. I didn’t want to think about the pain he must’ve been in and how his body must’ve shaken as he choked on his own vomit.
I quickly slammed back another shot as my mind began to swirl in a different direction.
Was there something I could’ve done? Was there a meeting I could’ve taken him to? He was clean. I knew he had been. I knew what he looked like high, and I knew what he looked like sober. For months, I’d seen him clear-eyed and determined, more than I’d ever seen him. What signs did I miss? How did he backslide? What triggered him to break the sobriety I knew he was working so hard for?
I should’ve set my business aside and gone to Los Angeles. My brother moved there to get away from my parents and how strict they were with him once they found out he was first doing drugs. Mom made him move back into the house, and Dad had cut him off financially. The first time he got sober, it was forced. They locked him in his room while he detoxed. He could’ve fucking died, and it wasn’t until I called a doctor to come over that he detoxed the rest of the way properly.
And my parents had been spitting fire at me because someone else was witnessing what was happening to my brother.
I saw him as much as I could while I was building my business with Drew. I wondered if I should’ve offered him the chance to build it with us. He could have been a third partner in the construction business we were getting off the ground. But by the time Drew and I had agreed to offer him a position, he had already backslid into doing drugs again.
Only this time, he was selling them in order to get out from underneath Mom and Dad’s reign.
He moved to Los Angeles, and I barely ever saw him. I traveled on my free weekends to see him, but he was always with the seediest characters. We still took brotherly beach trips, and we still laughed over beers, but I could always tell when he was high.
Which was why I was ecstatic to see him whenever he was sober.
Week after week I’d see him, meeting him halfway between San Diego and L.A. Every single time I saw him, he was clear-eyed. He was thinking straight. He was talking about how he was getting out of the game and how he was cleaning his act up. His pockmarks were no longer fresh, just scars of a life that used to be lived. I restarted talks with Drew about adding him to the company and finding him a position he could work.
I wanted to get my brother back to San Diego, even if it meant I never saw Mom or Dad again.
And then he just died. Overdosed, just like that.
And I somehow felt it was my fault, that maybe, had I gotten into the company sooner, had I gotten him home sooner, or hell, had I moved the fucking company out to L.A., maybe he would still be alive.
Maybe he just needed a support system that was willing to move with him instead of him always moving to them.
I threw back another shot as an argument wafted to the forefront of my mind. It was the last time I’d spoken with John before everything happened. I told him to come stay with me. I’d just purchased my home with the money we obtained from nailing our first massive job with the company, and I had more than enough room to house him. I told him I could support him. Offer him a job at the company. We could live out our days on the beach and fuck beautiful women and live the lives we’d always wanted to live.
For some reason, that suggestion made him angry.
Looking back on it, it was possible he had already been using again. There were many things my brother was, but angry wasn’t one of them. Everything rolled off his back. It was incredibly out of character for him to get torn up about something like that.
The one thought that kept racing through my mind was that the argument we had before he drove back to L.A. in the middle of the night could have been the trigger that caused him to overdose.