“It’s not nothing,” I tell him, stirring the tea.
I leave out they should turn down their fucking game.
“It should be,” Silas says. “Video games should be nothing. Bride of Chucky should be nothing, and fireworks should be nothing, and trucks racing past me on the interstate should be nothing. All that should be goddamn nothing, Levi.”
I take the strainers from the tea, put them in the sink, walk the mugs over to the living room, put them down on coasters on the coffee table and sit next to him.
“It’s okay that it’s not,” I say.
“Everyone keeps saying that,” he tells me, eyes still closed, head still back on the couch, still absent-mindedly petting the dog. “Everyone’s a fucking liar.”
I’m pretty sure that everyone is me, his therapist, and maybe his buddies from the Marines.
Silas says he hasn’t slept in three days, and he looks it. He says he called in to work sick yesterday morning and hasn’t left his townhouse since, and he looks it. His eyes are red-rimmed, deeply circled. His dark hair is wild and tousled, his stubble two days deep. His clothes look as though they’ve been slept in, or worse, tossed-and-turned in.
“It was that movie,” he says. “Bride of Chucky. It’s not even a good movie. It’s not even scary. I thought it would be fine because I’ve been watching movies again, and it’s been okay, and then it wasn’t.”
He finally opens his eyes, looks around, focuses. Leans forward and grabs the tea that I made him.
“I even watched that movie Pearl Harbor and I was okay,” he says.
I clench my jaw and then take a swallow of my own tea, because if I don’t, I might ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing.
“Isn’t that movie supposed to be terrible?” I ask after a moment.
“It is,” Silas confirms. “It’s bad and boring and the whole thing is a tedious love story, and I watched every minute of it and then slept like a baby.”
He takes a gulp of tea, looking into the mug.
“But fucking Bride of Chucky is also terrible, yet it made me dream of a pre-teen with an infant and only one hand,” he says. “It’s more than anyone should have to deal with, Levi.”
“It is,” I confirm.
I breathe, take a sip of my tea, breathe again as if that simple act can lift the crushing weight from my chest.
I betrayed Silas. Right there, in that bathroom, I kissed his sister like my life depended on it and I betrayed him. I knew I shouldn’t do it, and I went ahead with it anyway.
“What’s in this tea?” he asks.
“Chamomile and lavender.”
“It’s good,” he says, looking into the mug. “I assume the recipe for it has some bullshit name like Serenity Now or Peace Be Upon You or Flashback No More!?”
“I don’t remember the name of the recipe, but it did recommend serving it on American flag coasters,” I tell him, and he snorts.
“Last week I was sitting in on this eminent domain deposition we’re trying,” he says, head back, staring at the ceiling. “And the lawyer on the other side — this huge corporation who wants the government to kick everyone out of a trailer park and make them homeless for five grand apiece so they can put a store on the land — was wearing a flag pin on his lapel. I wanted to shove it down his throat.”
I look at him steadily, and finally, he looks over at me.
For a split second, I see June in his face, and then it’s gone. I swallow hard, will myself not to think about her. Not now.
“Is that what children got blown up for?” Silas asks, his voice suddenly quiet, his bravado gone. “So some bigwig could make an extra million dollars in his year-end bonus at the expense of people who have almost nothing? Is that what I was fighting for?”
“Not everything that happens is your fault,” I remind him gently.
“It feels like it sometimes,” he admits. “It feels like I should be able to stop these things and set them right, and…”
He trails off again, trusting me to know what he means.
And I do.
From the outside, Silas and I are opposites: he’s loud, gregarious, always popular; I’m quiet, bookish. He joined the military and I got a master’s degree in trees. He spends his days arguing with people, and I’m usually happiest on a week-long solo hike.
But for all his bluster, all his machismo, and all his posturing, Silas is a pure soul. He loves his family. He loves his sister. He loves his country, despite its faults, and everything he does and everything he’s ever done has been because he truly believes that he can make the world a little bit better.
“Levi?” he says after a beat.
“Yes?”
Silas sighs. Then he turns and looks at me.