Hate You Not

“I think you should take this.” I hold the pill up for her. She opens her mouth and fixes her wide eyes on mine. I set the pill on her tongue. Then she tips her chin up, takes some water from the straw I’m holding out for her.

“Thanks, hiss,” she murmurs. She sinks back down into sleep, and I’m alone in her room.

I’ve laughed at her antics all night, but I know I shouldn’t. If she weren’t drugged, I have no doubt June Lawler would hate everything about this situation.

I check my phone clock, find it’s 3:40 AM, and text her brother.

She’s sleeping in her bed. Do u think she has a baby monitor somewhere so I could watch her from another room?

When he doesn’t answer, I lie on the other side of her queen-sized bed, on top of the covers. I curl over on my side and put a hand over my face, smelling the sanitizer residue that still lingers on my skin.

My chest tightens, like there’s a black hole inside sucking everything else inward. My mind circles past my mother—as it does at odd times like this—and around to Ash. He hated to be called that when he was a teenager, but in the last few years, he signed all the cards he sent me that way.

Little Ash. A little boy—just five—on that Tuesday night when I was a stupid little fuck and changed the course of our lives.

My throat aches and my eyes sting as I think about the box of clothes I found when I was cleaning out my childhood home a few weeks back—shirts, jackets, and shoes from when Asher was in kindergarten. I squeeze my eyes shut, and I see the two of us on the back porch eating those popsicles, the triangle-shaped ones. Minute Maid, I think was the brand. He would always want the red. Everybody wants the red, but I would always take the orange or purple.

I think of Asher the man, the way he always looked when he was with Margot or Oliver—just total happiness…almost goofiness. I didn’t go to their house much, even though he asked me often. It made me feel…different. Too different from him. Asher was living a real life, while mine was only a facade. It made sense, I guess. Ash had Sutton, and I think she lifted him up. Elevated him above the bullshit we grew up with. But more so than that…Ash was never fucked up like me.

My eyes ache as I think of what I told him in a fight we had before I left for India.

He asked me over for a cookout, and I said I couldn’t—like I almost always did—but that day, he was less patient. He asked what was wrong with me. I told him “nothing” and he said, “you’re lying to yourself.” I didn’t take that well and told him maybe he was too content.

He laughed his ass off at that. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m too fucking content, Burke. You gonna shake things up for me by going to climb Everest and die in all the long lines?”

“You have to train for that, so no. No Everest.”

“Okay. Well, too content. I’ll keep that in mind in case I need to do some mental troubleshooting. What do you recommend the most, B? Chronic sleep deprivation or working every second of each day on crazy shit that might all be a gamble, hoping it might ease some of the guilt you’re carrying that’s not yours to begin with?”

“Nothing I have done has ever been a gamble. Especially not this venture right now. That’s some special bullshit.”

“I’m not ‘too content.’ You’re unhappy. Everything inside you is still cracked in a million pieces, and you hate to see me because it makes you feel like a fish out of water.”

“Fuck you, Ash. Take it to family therapy.”

“I will, and you should come with. Thursday afternoons at 4:30. Might be the best thing you could ever do.”

“Have fun, little brother.”

“Think of what you’re working for, and if nothing comes to mind to fill that spot, then maybe you’ve got everything bass ackwards.”

“Always were the clever one, weren’t you?”

We texted the next day, as I waited for my plane at SFO. We both said “sorry.” But that’s what I thought about the whole goddamn miserable trip. Asher and his smugness. Asher and his worry for me. Asher saying I was messed up. How ridiculous. I told myself that maybe it was jealousy. The bastard whose roof we grew up under has always prized money over everything else. Asher says—he said—that he was nothing like our old man, but he worked for the fucker day in and day out. So I told myself he envied my success.

I chew the inside of my cheek and trace the shadows on the wall with my gaze. I’m worth almost a hundred million dollars, and I can’t get my niece and nephew back to where they’re from. That’s how little Asher and Sutton thought of me. They would rather have their kids grow up at rodeos and county schools than be shepherded through life by someone like me.