“Shane Matthews?” I question, turning around to look at her.
“Oh God, yes, he’s…”
“A self-absorbed fool and dumb as a doorknob,” I finish, thinking of his asshole brother from Clintwood Academy.
“Do you trash talk everyone or is today just an exception?” she questions.
I shrug, glancing back at Aiden’s door, my foot tapping as I look down the hall, hoping to see someone, anyone, my mother maybe, running down here to check on her first-born son.
“Hmm, I’m going to go with…it’s part of your everyday lifestyle.”
I don’t bother responding to that either. I’ve lived all my life being judged, with everyone’s speculations about my life buzzing around me like damn flies. I’ve grown desensitized to all that shit. Besides, she’s nosy.
“Anyway, you do know that secrets come out one way or the other, right?”
Did she see last night’s headline flashing on the evening news? Did she see my father’s face and his latest whore making the rounds of every network?
“That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say since you rudely interrupted me.”
“You hate secrets?” she questions, choosing not to fight me on her level of intelligence. Wise choice, Little Minx.
“Like you said, secrets have a way of coming out, sooner or later.”
I think of everything that happened last night. I had to drive my brother here and now they won’t tell me what’s wrong! The fuck!
“You’re getting angry all over again.”
“Stop trying to read me,” I grit out.
“I’m not trying to read you. Your anger is palpable,” she starts after a while, her voice surprisingly soothing and airy. “So’s your anxiety.”
“Is that your own anxiety talking?” I counter, eyeing her from the corner of my eye.
“I don’t have anxiety.” She rushes to cover her face with her palms, massaging her temples. “Mom says anxiety gives people ugly wrinkles way too early in life. I’m too young for that!”
Figures that’s her motivation. I want to smile so bad, but I don’t.
“I guess you like your fairytales with more than a little sprinkling of glitter, with rainbows and unicorns, thinking the world is all good?”
“Eww.” Her disgust is as quick as her blinking. “Number one, I hate glitter, that shit is hard to clean out. And two, leave rainbows and unicorns out of this. You can hate everything else.”
I want to laugh at that, but the pain in my hand makes me wince instead. In a blink of an eye, the mysterious girl, without asking, grabs my injured hand.
I tense up, watching her through the slits of my eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking your busted-up hand,” she murmurs, carefully unfurling my palm. “Please don’t tell me you play sports.”
“You really don’t know who I am?” I question, feeling skeptical all of a sudden.
“Please, the world doesn’t revolve around assholes who want to assert their need to let their anger out on inanimate objects in hospital hallways.”
Looking into her eyes, she shoots me a genuine smile that literally steals the breath out of my lungs. Good God, she’s stunningly beautiful when she smiles.
She doesn’t give me a moment longer to admire her as she gets up and turns to run down the hall, leaving a chilly breeze of loneliness and aching pain.
“Hey, where are you going?” I call after her. She spins around without actually stopping, looking like a butterfly in that moment, making my heart pound so hard in my chest. She might flutter away and be gone forever or…
“I’ll be right back. Don’t attack the chairs while I’m gone.” She turns around again, more like spins in a perfect ballet spin. But before she can run again, she looks over her shoulder. “Don’t even think about attacking that wall.”
And with that, she’s gone, her long mane blowing behind her. Who is this girl and why does she look like the face of my undoing?
My phone vibrates again. I ignore it, not knowing what I would say if I pick it up. Tell my little brother, who practically adores and worships the ground his older brother walks on, that said older brother is dying? I think not.
In her absence, my anger start building all over again, like a monster that was being held back by her presence. Fishing out my buzzing phone, I notice it’s not Liam, but the asshole who calls himself my father.
“What?” I snap.
“Julian, son,” he starts, blowing his breath through the phone. “Where are you? Your mother is worried sick.”
“Since when have you cared about Mom?” I bite out, remembering the devastated look on her face. I lost my mother last night and no matter what anyone will tell me, I know she’ll never be the same after seeing her manwhore of a husband parade around a twenty-one-year old, single brain-cell whore on national TV.
“Son, your mother and I…” he blows out another breath. I can imagine he’s running his hands through his hair. “It’s complicated.”
Sure, breaking someone’s heart and soul is always complicated.
“Stop using her as an excuse for your inability to control how many times you drop your pants to how ever many whores you sleep with, successfully ignoring your family. And we sure as hell don’t give a damn where you do it.”
“You saw.” It’s not a question.
“The whole world saw.”
Silence stretches between us for a second. There’s nothing he can say that will make me see him in a different light than the one he shone on himself.
He sighs heavily on the other end and I know he’s about to change the topic, again. He never answers a direct question, never admits to anything. I guess that’s a trait in cheaters.
“Where are you, Julian? Are you with your brother?”
“Which one?” I wait, feeling like I’m just a breath away from snapping. “Which brother are you talking about, Dad?”
I make sure to put as much mockery and sarcasm in that moniker that John Fitzgerald, the CEO of the great conglomerate, Fitzgerald House, deserves.
“Julian…”
“Which brother?” I press, my words clipped and low.
If I close my eyes right now, I swear I can see the look on his face whenever he’s unfortunate enough to see Aiden in the house, Aiden playing on the beach, Aiden in his fucking life…
Since I’ve been old enough to understand and read a room, I’ve known that the topic of Aiden has been hard on him. He never talks about him. Never mentions him. He just pretends like Aiden doesn’t exist.
“You know who I’m talking about—”
“Aiden,” I cut him off, standing up now, unable to remain seated a second longer as if my life isn’t hanging by a thin thread and that my family isn’t about to be ripped apart. “His name is Aiden John Fitzgerald. He’s your firstborn son. He has your name and you will fucking acknowledge him because he’s still your fucking son!”
Not that he has had the decency of referring to Aiden as anything less than a mistake.
“I know his name…”
“So why don’t you ever mention it?” I demand. “For you, he just doesn’t exist. Your world would be nothing short of perfect if he wasn’t here, huh?”