Theirs to Keep

“He was a cool brother,” I allowed. “Growing up less than a year apart, we were pretty inseparable. We went to school together, shared the same friends. He dated some of my girlfriends, actually. It was all I could do to keep him out of my personal life.”

“Little brothers can be like that I guess,” said Camden.

“So you have them too?”

He shook his head, and his stubble made a scratching noise on the pillow. “No. No siblings at all.” He cleared his throat and looked down. “Just me.”

My heart fluttered, probably in sympathy for him. I knew what it was like to be alone. But I also knew what it was like to have someone, and that made things even worse.

“As I was saying it was great to have a little brother,” I continued on. “And Reese was cool. Very cool, actually.” My chest grew heavy. “Up until the moment he wasn’t.”

The silence between us was almost deafening. After an extraordinarily long pause, Camden reached out gently and took my hand.

“So what happened?”

“Oh you know the story,” I joked, as if it could help. “Kid grows up. Kid falls in with the wrong crowd. Kid gets addicted to pills first and then heroin, because heroin’s so much fucking cheaper, only—”

“Karissa I’m sorry.”

I nodded perfunctorily. “Yeah. Everyone is.”

More silence, more pain. I pushed it down. I had to continue.

“Anyway, we did everything we could for him. Tough love. Soft love. Rehab, four different times, inpatient and outpatient. But those fucking friends, man. They did him in. And then he started taking on too much product from a dealer named Spence, because it makes perfect logical sense to extend product to an addict, mind you.”

I shook my head, examining my feelings. The anger and rage hadn’t subsided at all. If anything, they were worse.

“He did the drugs he was supposed to sell,” Camden guessed. “Didn’t he?”

“No,” I grumbled. “Even worse.”

Across from me, my lover’s brow furrowed. I went on before I chickened out.

“So yeah, I went to Reese’s apartment one day and found him totally passed out. I got angry. I went through his stuff and trashed everything. I flushed every last bit of it — apparently even the stuff that wasn’t his.”

“And let me guess. Spence went nuts?”

“To put it mildly, yes,” I answered. “This rat fuck shows up the next day, and his guys beat my little brother to within an inch of his life. Blunt force trauma. Lots of it. Reese ended up in a three-day coma, bleeding from both ears. I stayed beside his bed the whole time, and so did my parents.”

“And… he died?” Camden asked hesitantly.

“No,” I laughed bitterly. “The tough little bastard lived through that. But he woke up angry. Not at the guys who’d been ordered to beat him up, or even at Spence himself. Oh no. The asshole was mad at me. All pissed off I’d flushed the drugs. Totally enraged I’d ‘wasted’ them and gotten him in all sorts of trouble.”

Camden did the only thing he could do: he shook his head. “Wow.”

“Oh, but it gets better. Because hey, guess what? All of a sudden my parents are pissed at me too. They one-hundred percent blamed me for what happened to Reese. Said it was all my fault, and I should mind my own business. Stay out of things that don’t have anything to do with me.”

“But you didn’t. Did you?”

“Fuck no.”

Camden swore under his breath. “Like I even had to ask.”

“You should know me by now,” I shrugged. “Tell me what happened next?”

He stared back at me, pausing for only a second. “You went after him. Spence.”

“Uh huh.”