I fly down the stairs, carrying Kir’s coat. I can’t believe he almost tricked me into going out without wearing it.
That little shit and his mischievousness will be the death of me someday.
At our living area, I help him put it on and zip it.
“I can do it on my own,” he whines.
“Uh-huh. Like removing it on the way out.”
He grins, then pretends to be pouty. “We’re late for Elsa.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s not going to work. Stay still.”
“I’m a grown man.” He stomps his foot.
“Of course you are, Monkey.”
“I’m going to be Superman one day, Kimmy, and fly you out of here. Wait and see.”
“You will, huh?” His stupid obsession with the superhero would be amusing if Xander wasn’t the one fuelling him with it. I really hate to admit that Xander’s carefree personality is what made Kir come out of his shell and make friends at school.
If he’d followed in my footsteps, he would’ve become a loner like me, an outcast like me, a nobody like me.
Just me.
And being me is the last thing I’d wish on my baby brother.
Elsa was the first to approach me. Ronan, too. I’m shit at approaching people.
Whenever I think about it, that fog surrounds my head with toxic thoughts like no one would want to be friends with the hot mess that I am.
That if they get close enough and see me for who I truly am, they’ll run away, or worse, they’ll use it to torment me harder.
Even with Elsa, I’m always scared about when she’ll figure out the truth about me and throw me behind her.
She became suspicious during my last visits, and to say I’m dreading this one would be the understatement of the century.
However, Kir will throw a fit if he doesn’t see her and the rest of the ‘cool guys’, as he calls them, and I’m kind of weak when it comes to those puppy eyes and pouty lips.
“Come on, hurry up…” he trails off mid-sentence, his arms hanging limp, and I know who he’s staring at behind me without having to turn around.
“Where are you going?” Her low voice has a biting edge like those hairy spiders – or rather, snakes, harsh and unyielding.
“To Elsa,” Kirian says softly.
I swallow hard after finishing with his coat and smother his hair. “Go wait for me by the car.”
He nods, appearing happy to be out of here, but then he stops, turns around, and hugs me. His small arms wrap around my neck in a tight hold, as if he doesn’t want to let me go. I stroke his silky hair, biting my lower lip to not break down in sobs.
For Kir. You’re doing this for this little man with a brilliant mind and delicate small hands.
“Go on, Monkey.” I push him away.
He steps back and stares behind me. “Bye, Mum.”
And then he’s running out of the door.
I rise to my feet and slowly turn around to face the woman who gave birth to two children but has no ounce of motherly instinct.
She’s taller than me, with a model body that she’s maintained for decades. Her soft brown curls fall to her shoulders. She’s wearing elegant trousers and a camisole that I would never be able to pull off in a lifetime.
Jeanine Reed isn’t only known for her magnificent artistic talent that apparently touches souls with bare hands – the magazines’ critics talk, not mine – but she’s also a beautiful woman who appears in her late twenties instead of early forties.
She has high cheekbones and thick eyebrows that she passed down to Kirian. I have nothing from her. Not her talent, not her beauty, not her grace, and certainly not her model figure. The only thing we share is the eye colour, but hers are bigger and more striking, like a sparkling tropical sea.
I’ve always felt out of sorts whenever we’ve been in public together, and I stopped counting the number of times I wanted to bury myself when someone asked if I was her daughter and she hesitated as if not wanting to admit to the disgrace that I am.
“We won’t be long,” I say with a forced smile.
I’m surprised she came out of her studio at all. We rarely see her when she has an upcoming exhibition, and when we do, it’s only so she can parade us around for the press – or parade Kirian, not me.
With this, here’s to hoping she won’t come out for at least another week.
And yes, my mum looks like a model when she’s painting, while I resemble a wannabe beggar in my best days.
“Stop.”
My feet come to a slow halt.
“Turn around.” Her tone is steel-like, callous and merciless, like a general speaking to his underling, not a mother to her only daughter.
Wincing, I face her.
“How much do you weigh?”
A lump balls at the back of my throat and I fiddle with the long sleeve of my pullover. “Sixty-three.”
“Sixty-three?” Her question, although lowly spoken, couldn’t have been any more brutal on my mind. “Are you even still on the diet?”
“Of course, Mum.”
“If you were, you would have lost three more kilos by now.” She motions at me with a finger. “Come here.”
“But Kir –”
“Come. Here.”
I’m reduced to a small child, the one who lost her nana and cried at her grave all day, begging her to come back, to not leave her with this mother, because she hated her, because she didn’t want to live with her.
As soon as I’m within reach, Mum motions at the scale she has near the dinner table. She has planted those all over the house during all these years. Dad told her to get rid of them, and he actively throws them away when he comes home, but there’s nothing we can do when he isn’t around.
“Get on it.”
“Mum…”
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Kimberly.” Her voice is like a scolding teacher, biting and meant to be obeyed.
The fog surrounds me, thickening and magnifying as I step on the scale. People’s hearts thunder when they’re waiting for an exam result, when they have a crush. Mine nearly beats out of its place as the electronic numbers of my weight filter in front of me. The thing that defines me as a person in Mum’s eyes are those numbers and nothing else.
Sixty-four kilos.
I nearly stop breathing. Shit, what did I do wrong? I ate nothing, or at least nothing I couldn’t vomit back up. Was it that diet cola?
“Didn’t you say it was sixty-three?”
“It was this morning.” I slowly step down, as if the disappearance of those numbers will save me from the lashing of my mother’s tongue.
“I expect you to be sixty by the end of the week and fifty-seven by the end of next week.”
“But –”
“No buts, Kimberly.” She taps her Louboutin heels on the ground. “I’ve been patient with you, but you’re not watching your weight. You’re not even tall, so you can’t afford the extra kilos. I expect results or else Kir will go to that boarding school.”
“N-no, Mum. You promised!” It’s as if someone took my heart and pierced it open with sharp knives.
The fact she could and would send Kirian away to have more space for her art as soon as I’m in college has always given me nightmares.
I won’t allow her to ruin his childhood like she destroyed mine.
“Only if you keep your promise.” She flips her hair as she ascends the stairs.
“I’ll do it.” My voice is brittle. “I’ll do it, Mum.”
She doesn’t even look back. I stopped expecting my mum to glance back at me, acknowledge me, see me.
I know I should stop asking for her attention by now, but the small child in me won’t let go.
With one final glimpse at the scale, I step outside.
Moisture pools in my eyes as I search for my keys on the counter.
For Kir. All of this is for Kir.
The fog won’t get to me. Not today, not tomorrow. Not until Kir is all grown up and can handle himself.
“Where are the stupid keys?” I groan in frustration, fighting the need to crawl into a dark corner and allow those morbid thoughts in.
They would devour me in no time and the next thing, I’ll be in the bathroom and –
“They’re in your hands, Kim.” Marian’s soft voice wrenches me out of my thoughts.
“Oh.” I stare at her kind face with a faint smile, then back to the keys which are, indeed, dangling from my pinkie. “Thanks, Mari.”
“Anytime, honey.” She smiles a little. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Broccoli and a small portion of mac and cheese for Kir.”
“How about you?”
“Salad – actually, forget about it. I’ll grab something on the way.”
I won’t.
This will be another day without dinner. It’s harder to vomit my food at night. It leaves me jittery with a stomachache and the inability to sleep, and if I can’t sleep, that fog will eat me in a matter of seconds.
After bidding Mari goodbye, I step outside, plastering a smile on my face. No matter what happens between me and Mum, Kirian can’t and will never find out about it. Not that he doesn’t suspect it, but I want to protect him as much as I can.
My smile falls when I find him dragging Xander by the hand from across the street. The freaking boy next door appears. His sun-kissed hair is tousled, bedroom style. His white hoodie contrasts against his tanned skin and his black jeans hang low on his hips as if Kir found him in bed and he barely had the time to button his clothes.
Shit. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the exact case. Kirian has free access to the Knight’s mansion – sort of like I did in the past. Ahmed opens the door for him, even if no one is at home. Lewis always dotes on him and the shit, Xander, treats him well.
“Hold on, Superman.” Xander rubs his fingers through his hair as if submitting it, but it’s only making it hotter.
Wait. No. There’s nothing hot about Xander.
My blood still boils from the way he called me a slut earlier. How he said he’ll make me watch as he fucks other girls.
Screw him a million times over and all the other girls he screws.
A prickling sensation has been digging at my skin since he said those words. I meant it, though – he’s the last person I would ever want.
I might have been stupid enough to wait and hope for his forgiveness once upon a time, but now, he’s just the boy next door.
The arsehole who lives across from me.
“You said you’ll help, Xan.”
“Of course.”
Kir wraps both his small hands around Xan’s bigger one, tugging him in my direction. “Kimmy is with Mum. You have to bring her out.”
My heart warms so hot, I can feel the remnants of the fog withering away, condensing into water and falling in the distance.
My baby brother is thinking about me. I underestimated his ability to feel the tension between me and Mum.
He shouldn’t have sought Xander for help, though. He’s part of the problem, not the solution.
Heck, he’s the worst part of the problem.
“Kimmy!” Kir shrieks upon seeing me and runs in my direction, his little feet carrying him slower than he likes.
I watch the street for any cars, even though we don’t have traffic around here.
“Hey, Monkey.” I ruffle his hair, completely erasing Xander from my surroundings. “Are you ready to go?”
He nods several times, then stops as if remembering something. “Can Xan come with us?”
Abso-fucking-lutely not.
I plaster a fake smile and direct it to said arsehole. “I’m sure he has things to do.”
I think I imagined it, but his jaw tics before he offers me his golden boy smile that causes his cheeks to crease, and there they are. Dimples. Deep, attractive as hell dimples.
He really shouldn’t have dimples. That should be exclusive to the good guys, not to bastards.
His smile and those dimples are a couple of the reasons why the girls fall all over him at school like he’s some sort of Casanova.
Actually, he is one. I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s disappeared with a girl – or two – in one of Ronan’s parties, only to appear some time later with lipstick all over his shirt and neck and the girl, hair messy and lipstick smudged, grinning like an idiot as if she ascended to heaven and is now returning.
Once again, it’s not me. It’s my ability to notice everything. If it were up to me, I would erase him completely from my existence. Or maybe, if I had some sort of a time machine, I would go back seven years in the past and not do what I’ve done.
But time machines don’t exist. This is what we’ve become and there’s no changing it, no matter how much I want – or rather, wanted to. I no longer yearn for his forgiveness.
He’ll never grant it, and I’ll just be hurting myself.
“Do you have things to do, Xan?” Kir asks him as he pulls me so the three of us are standing near the middle of the street.
“Depends.” He’s speaking to my brother, but his entire unnerving attention is on me.
His light eyes are drawing a dark path into my soul, all paved with thorns. When we were kids, I thought magic was the reason behind the colour of his eyes. Turns out, it’s black magic.
It used to be easy when I had the habit of averting that punishing gaze, when I pretended that this would be over soon. It’s never happened. And now that I’ve sworn to meet him head-on, it’s getting exhausting.
Keeping eye contact with him is like drowning into the ocean of his irises. The harder I stare, the closer I am to the bottom.
“We’re going to Elsa.” Kir clutches Xander’s hand with his free one. “Come with us, please?”
“Sure, Superman.” He musses Kir’s hair.
“Yay! Hear that, Kimmy? Xan is going.”
“No, he’s not.” I lean over to hiss to Xander, “Since when do you go out with us?”
“Since I decided I can.” His shit-eating grin never disappears. “Besides, I’m going to Aiden.”
“Go to him in his damn home.”
“Or I can go to him at Elsa’s since he never leaves her side.” He steps closer and it takes everything in me not to push back. His body heat mingles with mine and I inhale him in, mint and fresh clothes out of the dryer and… Is that a hint of alcohol?
He’s still smiling, but his tone is biting as he murmurs. “And lose the fucking attitude.”
“Can we go in your car, Xan?” Kir jumps, oblivious to the tension brewing between us. “Can we?”
“No.”
“Of course.”
Xander and I speak at the same time. I shoot him a glare. “I have a car, let’s go separately.”
I pull on Kir’s hand, but he refuses to budge. “I want to go in Xan’s car. It’s sooo cool.”
“You little ungrateful brat.” I stare down at him, incredulous. “Whose car drives you to school every day?”
He pouts, blinking up at me with those puppy eyes. “But today, we can go in Xan’s car. Please, Kimmy, please?”
The resident arsehole’s lips tug in a smirk as he watches me fighting the Kirian pleading effect and losing miserably.
Still, there’s no way in hell we’ll go in Xander’s stupid car. I just have to find a way to convince my baby brother of that fact.
As if sensing my intentions, Xander retrieves his keys from his pocket and throws them in Kirian’s direction. The latter clutches them with both hands, staring at them with wild eyes.
“Go ahead.”
“Really?”
At Xander’s nod, Kirian runs towards the dark blue Porsche, trotting and grinning like an idiot. I’d hate to put an end to that joyful expression and I hate that this bastard is the reason behind it.
Maybe if I weren’t such a chicken shit, I would ask Dad for a sports car instead of my safe MINI Cooper.
“You’re a wanker, okay?” I sigh in both frustration and resignation.
Xander kills the space between us until his face is mere inches from mine. His mint breath intertwines with my shaky one as his eyes darken to a bottomless blue colour.
I’m so taken aback, it takes me a moment to realise the proximity.
He hasn’t been this close since that time at the beginning of the year when he cornered me in the garden and told me – or rather, snapped at me – to stop wearing short skirts.
It was the first time he’d gotten close after so many years of tormenting me from afar and blatantly leaving the room whenever I came in as if I had a contagious disease.
He cornered me a few times after and they all had to do with my dress code.
Fuck him. It’s not like he’s my dad.
Like every time he gets close, I can’t control my breathing. I know it’s inhale, exhale.
In. Out.
But sometimes, even those simple steps are the toughest thing to do. For one, I keep breathing him in with every inhale and breathing my confusion out with every shaky exhale.
It’s as if I’m about to vomit my heart, not my food. His lips twitch and I nearly faint, stopping the breathing struggle altogether.
Is he going to kiss me?
Shit. Shit.
“What are you doing?” I hiss, pulling my head away.
“I wasn’t doing anything, but if you keep the attitude, I’ll do things you won’t like.”
My lips part, then I quickly clamp them shut at the thought he might consider that as an invitation.
Damn him and damn me.
“Kimmy! Xan!” Kirian hops in front of the car. “Come on!!”
I raise my hand in a small wave, using the chance to pull out from Xander’s orbit. It’s like a magnet that keeps dragging me in despite my attempts to stay away.
When I chance a glance back at Xander, he’s not intimidating me with his gaze as he was a moment earlier. He’s staring at my hand, my wave, and then his focus slips for a moment.
No, no, no.
I drop my hand to my side and pull down the sleeve of my woollen pullover as I brush past him towards Kir.
He didn’t see.
He couldn’t.
