Barnsey’s still under and we’ve barely left her side.
Jud literally hasn’t left her side. Christian and him still aren’t talking, they move around the room, avoiding each other, not meeting one another’s eyes.
I go home sometimes, cook things to bring up to him. Make sure my boyfriend sleeps some, but he doesn’t go too far.
He finds a spare room on the same floor, sleeps for an hour.
Makes me lie next to him while he does, like he thinks something might go wrong if he’s not right by me.
We’ve been talking about it a lot, where we’ll go after this is all over.
He wants somewhere warm, I want somewhere cold.
He’s eyeing one of the Hawaiian islands, maybe Bali or Mauritius. I’m really pushing for the Lake District of Marlborough1 or L’Isle sur la Sorgue2 or Magdalen Islands or the Thousand Islands in Canada.
Thermostatically, we’re envisioning different things, but the part I really care about is that he’s envisioning it with me.
I have this nervous feeling about telling my brother.
I won’t do it for a while. I’d be worried about leaving him. I think he’d be lonely. Especially now that he’s fallen in love and, I mean, you know how loving someone and having them and then losing them — it leaves you different. It leaves you a different kind of empty.
Everything about my brother right now, it feels like he’s that kind of empty.
So leaving him here feels selfish.
I wanted so badly to leave all this last year. That normal life I was chasing that I so very briefly had, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Or maybe it was, it was just missing the ingredients that make life truly, properly good. Any life without Christian and my brother was always going to be running at a loss, and I feel this tension start to rise in me about how maybe one day I’ll have to choose. Between wanting normalcy and wanting a relationship with my brother.
I squeeze Christian tighter as he sleeps because I feel anxious about it and he opens one eye.
“You good?”
I nod. “Fine, yeah.”
My phone rings and I sit up to answer it.
Romeo. He’s still staying at our place but because of all this, I haven’t seen much of him. We’re doing okay though. It’s not strange or uncomfortable. Christian’s not being weird, though Christian’s also been distracted, so.
I answer it. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he says, voice sounding strained.
“Are you okay?” I straighten up.
“Yeah, yeah — hey, where are you?” Rome asks.
“Weymouth Street.” I frown. “Why?”
“Oh — no, I know. I mean — can I meet you there?”
“What?” I frown. He’s not really meant to be leaving the house.
“I just have to drop you something?”
“What?”
“Just can you meet me downstairs in ten?”
“Rome—” I shake my head.
“Dais—” he says, impatient. “Just fucking meet me downstairs in ten.”
Then he hangs up and I sigh.
“Hey?” Christian pulls me up towards him. “What was that?”
“I don’t know—” I shrug. “Romeo needs to drop me something.”
“Oh.” He shrugs.
I roll in towards him. “What did the doctor say about your mum this morning?”
“Stable.” He nods. “But nothing new.”
I touch his face. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, I guess.” He flashes me a smile. “Good as I can be, all things considered.”
“Good.” I lean in to kiss him. It’s quick. A mindless brush over the lips. I push back and jump to my feet. “I’m going to go grab this from Rome.”
“Want me to come?”
I shake my head. “You rest, I’ll just be a minute.”
I go stand on the street corner of Weymouth and Beaumont and wait for Rome. It’s a nice day. Springtime in London, there’s always some charm to it but today the sky’s extra blue, perfect fluffy clouds. Conspiratorial, really.
After a few minutes one of our cars pull up, the door swings open and Romeo climbs out.
He looks sort of stressed. Thrown together, disheveled. White t-shirt, baggy jeans, red shirt undone and over it.
Something on his face, it makes me feel nervous.
Romeo Bambrilla and I, we’ve known each other since day dot. We grew up side by side, we’ve watched each other fall,3 we’ve watched each other grow. I know how he looks when he’s angry, I know how he looks when he’s happy, when he’s feeling himself, when he’s feeling me, when he’s excited, when he’s afraid—
And his face right now, here in front of me — I don’t know. I can’t place it.
“Hey—” I frown. “Are you okay?”
He nods behind him. “I need you to get in the car, Dais.”
I scrunch up my nose, confused. “What?”
“We’ve got to go—” He reaches for my wrist.
I step back from him. “Where?”
“Daisy — I need you to get in the fucking car—”
“No—” I shake my head.
“Now, Daisy—” He reaches for me.
“Romeo, no—” I smack him off and then what happens next, I’m not expecting.
Miguel comes up from behind me — I didn’t realise he’d followed me down — grabs me from behind and lifts me up off the ground, carrying me into the car.
I start bucking and screaming in their arms, kicking and swinging and trying to get free but the two of them are stronger than I am. And it’s right then that Christian appears at the front door of the hospital. He looks down the street towards me—
“Christian!” I yell for him and he breaks into a run right as Miguel hurls me into the backseat of the car. Rome climbs in after me and they slam the door.
Christian’s banging on the glass and I’m banging on the window back and when did my screaming become crying?
I press my nose up against the window and Christian’s trying to punch through the glass. I watch him break at least two fingers and probably a knuckle and it doesn’t slow him down an inch. His eyes are blurry and red and I watch him as it all falls to some slow kind of motion… The car is pulling out into the busy London street and I keep my eyes on him the whole time and him on me and there’s so much I should have told him. So much. But it all boils down to this:
I love him. He’s all I want. He’s all I think about. Everything I didn’t want or believe about love, I want and believe in it with him. And loving him has undone me wide open. But if time has taught me anything it’s that loving anyone when my brother is who he is, is a mistake.
Christian gets smaller and smaller and I press my face harder and harder against the glass that separates us, and I’ve never seen him cry like this before, not even with his mum, but fuck, he’s a mess and my heart breaks more seeing him all shattered like this because loving me does this to people.
I lose everyone. Everyone, all the time.
I lose people like a tree loses its leaves in autumn. I’m marred by it. It’s the thing that’s shaped me most… My distinctive characteristic… Some people have freckles sprinkled on their noses, other people have eyes clear like water, or hair that’s the colour of the night, but me?
My unique feature is that I lose everyone, and everyone loses me.
1 In New Zealand.
2 In Provence, France.
3 In more ways than one.
