Unforgotten (Forgiven)

by Garrett Leigh

  Or perhaps I was so abstracted by Gus’s sex life that I’d forgotten to blunt my senses.

  I drank the beer. All of it, while Gus watched, sipping at his own. My shoulder ached. I rubbed at it, absently kneading the muscles.

  “Can I ask you something?” Gus’s gentle voice broke the silence.

  “If you like.”

  “What did Keane mean when he said prison? I’ve never heard that about you before, and Luke’s never mentioned it.”

  I didn’t want to think about what he had heard about me, but Keane’s rhetoric had been so wildly off base, I couldn’t help but smile. “Honestly?”

  “No, lie to me, dude. I live for it.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

  “What does?”

  I didn’t want to think about that either. I slumped forward and dumped my elbows on the kitchen counter. “He was talking shit. I got arrested for thumping his son—”

  “Shane?”

  “Yeah, that’s the knobhead, but they never charged me because they had him on camera hitting me first, and he was the one with an ounce of weed in his pocket.”

  “Your weed?”

  “Maybe.”

  Gus rolled his eyes. “Okay, forget I asked. I was just checking I wasn’t missing something super important.”

  “Would it have made a difference to you if I had been inside?”

  “As in, would I have let you stay in my house? Course I would. You’re family.”

  Family. Wow. I guess we were if we counted our siblings cohabiting as legally binding, which made the obsession I was developing with his damn-fucking forearms all the more weird. “Then why does it matter?”

  “Because I like to have my facts in order before I run my mouth.”

  “We’re very different people.”

  Gus gifted me another grin. “Trust me, mate. I know.”

  Gus

  I’d forgotten how clever Billy was with his big words and complicated sentences that often had me googling when he wasn’t looking. He’d been the year above me at school, so we’d never shared a class, but I remembered him winning everything at primary school: sports, academics, art. He was one of those kids who was good at everything, unlike me who had got by on my ability to run faster and harder than everyone else.

  Everyone except him.

  I was bigger than him these days, but somehow found it easier to remember him as a child than I did the man I’d kissed in the alleyway outside the pub five years ago. Kissed him once, twice, three times before I’d pushed him against the wall and slid my hands—

  Stop it.

  But as hard as I tried, the images kept coming, bombarding me as I watched him press the new roof membrane into place with the same broom he’d probably used ten years ago. Regret hit me too. I’d pushed him away that night, for once letting my head rule my dick, and despite being drunk as a skunk, I remembered the hurt in his eyes, fleeting and sharp, before he’d smirked and sauntered away. He’d wanted it, he’d wanted me, and he never spoke to me again. Never looked my way until I found him in my house fifteen days ago.

  Now we were in an odd state of flux, caught between two boys who had known each other forever, and two souls who didn’t know each other at all. We were strangers, really, so why did having him in my life feel so normal? Why did it feel as if he’d always been here? It hadn’t been that way when Luke had come home, or even Mia. But with Billy it was easy. Natural. At least, on the surface.

  “Do you ever do any work?” Billy came to a stop in front of me, nudging my feet with the broom. “Every time I look up you’re staring into space.”

  “I’m a dreamer.”

  “You’re a lazy git.”

  Billy’s usual malevolence was absent. I met his gaze and found myself hypnotised, caught in his all-seeing stare. I was good at hiding my emotions, blanketing them with an easy grin, but in that moment, I felt as if Billy saw through every brick of every wall I’d ever put up.

  It should’ve unsettled me. But it didn’t. My only concern was that it was the end of the day and I couldn’t think of a reason for him to want to spend the rest of the evening with me, especially given where I was headed for dinner. “So...”

  Billy dropped the broom down the side of the house. “So what?’

  “I was going to have dinner at Mia’s place. Wanna come?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t like Mia?”

  “It’s not Mia I can’t be arsed with.”

  Like I didn’t already know that. Luke had kept his distance since Billy had been back, checking in with me daily, but giving Billy space. Perhaps too much space. Enough that Billy thought his brother didn’t care. “Luke’s cooking, if that helps. Mia’s worse than me.”

  “I don’t know how bad you are. You don’t cook.”

  Guilty as charged. I’d never bothered to learn as I hated being home alone. Was there anything more depressing than a home-cooked dinner for one? “You could always cook.”

  “I’d cook you a ten-course meal if it meant you wouldn’t give me puppy-dog eyes about spending time with my brother.”

  “I’m not giving—” Dammit. Despite my resolution not to be drawn into deflecting, petty bickering, sometimes he got me. “Whatever. I’m going to see our lovestruck siblings. Come with me, or stay home and eat the two-year-old oven chips in the freezer.”

  “Maybe I’ll go out.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  He wouldn’t. Billy only left the house to work or buy cigarettes from the corner shop that was ninety seconds from my front door, and I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. On the one hand, it made my self-imposed grounding worth the angst—staying home would be pointless if he wasn’t there. On the other, it worried me that he was so unhappy he’d rather hide in my house than face the world.

  Still. I couldn’t make him come out with me. I shrugged and let it drop. We packed up the rest of the gear without speaking, and I drove us home.

  I took a shower. When I got out, Billy was nowhere to be seen, which led me to his closed bedroom door. I stood in front of it, fist hovering to knock, but it flew open, cutting my dithering short.

  Billy looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He was rubbing his shoulder, hair sticking up in every direction. “Thought you were going out?”

  “I am.”

  “And yet you’re still here.”

  “Trying to get rid of me?”

  “No. Just wondering how many chips to cook.”

  “You’re really not coming?”

  Billy let out an exasperated sigh and backed up into his room. He flopped onto the bed, then shifted around as if he couldn’t get comfortable. “I don’t want to go to Luke’s house so we can get on each other’s tits. We’re doing just fine with the wall of silence. Why rock the boat?”

  “You can’t have dinner together without sinking the ship?”

  Billy snorted. “Of course we can’t. He’s so fucking annoying.”

  “He’d probably say the same about you.”

  “Probably. Doesn’t change anything. Mia told me she couldn’t be in the same room as him for months when she first came back. No one made her have dinner with him.”

  I wondered when he’d got round to having a deep and meaningful with my sister. In all that had happened in the last year, I hadn’t noticed them touching base. But then, I wasn’t in the business of monitoring Mia’s conversations. Damn, if she hadn’t had enough of that.

  A shudder passed through me as I recalled the hellish months she’d spent under the thrall of a stalker. The only good to come of it had been to draw her and Luke—and perhaps Billy, if he’d ever admit it—closer together. Luke could’ve died. Maybe her too, if the lunatic obsessed with her hadn’t been caught.

  “Uh, hello?”

  I bl
inked.

  Billy was sitting up and shaking his head at me.

  I frowned. “What?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Fuck’s sake. You get what you want and you’re not paying enough attention to notice? Man, you’re a ball ache.”

  “I’m paying attention.”

  “Okay,” he retorted, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “So you heard every word then, yeah?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, and he knew it. I shrugged helplessly, and was rewarded by his rare laugh. Deep and low, it did odd things to me, just like his smile, and I had to force myself not to gawp at him, or rub my belly to quiet the butterflies having a rave down there. “Of course I heard every word. You’re coming to dinner with me, you’re going to be nice to Luke, then come home with me to drink beer and slag him off where it does no harm.”

  “That’s what you heard?”

  “Yup.”

  Billy stepped closer—close enough that he was an inch from being up in my face. “Then I guess that’s what we’re doing.”

  He moved away before I could react, but victory had me grinning like an idiot as I followed him down the stairs. It was all going to work out.

  * * *

  Half an hour in, I realised my mistake. I should’ve listened to the nagging instinct that told me this was a bad idea. More than that, I should’ve listened to Billy when he told me the same. I sat at Luke’s kitchen table, gamely making conversation only my sister responded to, while Billy and Luke steadfastly ignored each other.

  It was excruciating.

  Eventually, Mia lost patience and gave up. Heavy silence consumed us as I cleared my plate of the roast chicken Luke had made. He stared at the wall behind Mia. Billy fidgeted beside me like a restless toddler and I threw a hand out under the table to still him. My palm connected with his thigh before I truly knew what I was doing.

  Billy froze.

  Then cleared his throat, and for a moment, seemed so about to speak that Mia’s downcast gaze brightened like the sun.

  But he didn’t speak. He tore his thigh from my grasp and left the table. The front door banged a minute later, and Luke let out a long breath. “Well that didn’t last long.”

  Mia glared. “Don’t blame him. You’re just as bad.”

  “I know.”

  “Why, though? It was just dinner. No one asked you to discuss your dead dad, or—”

  “Mia.” I broke in before her frustration made her tongue too loose. “Just let them be, eh? Maybe it was too soon.”

  “Too soon for a simple conversation?”

  Luke snorted. “Have you ever had a simple conversation with my brother?”

  “I’ve never had a simple conversation with you, which is why I think this is all your fault.”

  Luke stood and walked out of the room in the opposite direction to Billy. He wasn’t the type to flounce around, but his soft tread on the stairs was deafening.

  I helped myself to Mia’s plate. Apparently I was the only one eating tonight, which was a crying shame. Luke was rubbish at everything tonight had needed to be, but the boy could cook.

  Mia sighed as I made short work of the chicken and potatoes on her plate. “Are you going to eat theirs too?”

  “Maybe,” I said around a mouthful. “But I’d feel bad if they came back, so probably not.”

  “Well, I don’t know about Billy, but I can tell you right now, Luke won’t come down until it’s time for him to make the kitchen look like no one lives here.”

  “You said that was cute.”

  “It is.”

  “You know it’s a Daley thing, right? Billy does it at work. Every time I need a tool, he’s already put it away, and he’s even more neurotic about folding plastic sheets.”

  Mia smiled, faint but true. “You make it sound like you’ve worked together for year, not barely a fortnight.”

  I ate more chicken and pondered the theory, and all I could come up with was the fact that this dinner would’ve been hard work even before Billy had come back. I loved Luke like a brother, but casual conversation wasn’t his strong point at the best of times. He was all or nothing, just like Mia, though their execution was night and day, ice and fire, and any other Game of Thrones reference I could think of that ended in bloody heartache.

  “Will you go talk to him for me?” Mia asked.

  “Who? Luke?”

  “Unless you were planning on chasing the other brother down?”

  I hadn’t been, but as I pushed my second empty plate away, I realised that I wanted to. That after two weeks of knowing he was safe in my house, imagining Billy roaming the streets of Rushmere in a foul mood terrified me. Good job you gave him a key then, eh? I hauled myself to my feet and abandoned Mia with the dirty dishes. Experience told me I’d find Luke sulking over the business accounts in the spare room, but he was in the room he shared with Mia, rummaging under the bed.

  He heard me coming and glanced up. “Are you leaving?”

  “What? And quit this buzzing shindig early?” I crouched beside him. “Nah. I got sent upstairs to check on you.”

  “Nice.” Luke dragged a wicker box from under the bed. He opened it, revealing hundreds of loose photographs. “These were my dad’s. My mum hated having her picture taken, so she junked his camera after he died.”

  “And no one thought to use their iPhone ever since?” I could believe it from the Daley family. Besides, Luke had left for the Navy shortly after, if my memory served me right. “Christ, is that Billy?”

  “No. That’s me. This is Billy.” Luke held up the faded snap, and then another next to it.

  “You look like twins.”

  “I know. We don’t anymore, but perhaps we’re more alike than I ever realised.”

  Luke spread more pictures on the carpet. I felt like an imposter gawping at them, but I couldn’t help it. The Daley boys had grown from des enfants mignons into men who stopped traffic, but despite their difference now, the hurt in their eyes was the same. No longer innocent boys, they were troubled men, and I didn’t know how to help them.

  I picked up a picture of Billy. “How old was he here?”

  Luke squinted at the snap. “Fifteen, maybe? It was probably right before he turned into a dick.”

  “You think he’d say the same about you?”

  “I’m sure he’d say worse, but as far as he’s concerned, I was all right until I left. He doesn’t get that I did it for him.”

  I was well versed in this period of Daley family history. How Luke had joined the Navy in secret after his father’s death, leaving his grieving family and Mia behind. His logic that he had to provide for them to keep Billy in school had always made sense to me, even though I’d witnessed firsthand how much it had hurt my sister, but I’d never given much thought to Billy. Perhaps I should’ve, given my own heartache when Mia had abandoned me to give herself a chance to get over Luke.

  Luke sighed, breaking my musings apart. “How’s he getting on? And I mean really, not the bullshit text updates you send me.”

  “I send you those because you ask for them. If you ever called, I’d elaborate, but I’m not game for typing an essay out with my thumbs. You want me to get RSI?”

  “An essay, huh? That bad?”

  “Not at all. He’s great.”

  Luke rolled his eyes. “He’s a pain in the arse. Don’t deny it.”

  “I’m not denying anything. Why would I do that? If he was giving me grief, I’d tell you, so he could be your problem instead of mine.”

  “You’d lie to me all day long if you thought it would make my life easier. That’s your jam, Gus, taking the weight for everyone else.”

  “Says you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just tell me the truth.”

  “I am telling you the truth. He works hard, and I hardly know he’s there at home.�
�

  “Because he’s out on the piss all night?”

  I shook my head. “Because he stays in his room and talks to his cat, at least he does when I’m there.”

  “Probably just as well.”

  “Not really. He’s good company, bro. I like him.”

  Downstairs, the front door opened and closed. I couldn’t imagine that Mia had gone out, so it had to be Billy. I took it as my cue to make tracks, and left Luke brooding over his photographs in the hope that Billy might join him.

  Tired but wired, I slipped out of the house without saying goodbye. As much as I loved them all, I’d reached my limit for family drama. I needed to be alone for a while, or at least with a stranger who didn’t ask questions and was hot enough to push Billy from my mind, unlike the one and only time I’d hooked up since he’d moved in and I’d spent the whole time wondering if he was okay.

  Damn him. Maybe this was why Luke couldn’t handle him. Because once he had a foothold in your brain, you couldn’t get rid of him. He’d been gone from my life for years, but now he was back for the foreseeable, he occupied my every thought. I even dreamt about him when I was asleep long enough for my subconscious to relax.

  Damn him.

  I walked home from Luke’s house and picked up the van, glad I hadn’t drunk any of the sweet French wine on offer. My phone had been having a rave in my pocket all night. I fished it out and replied to a handful of Grindr messages, seeing who’d bite.

  A new face came up. I barely looked at him as I sent my reply, and I was on the road before I truly knew what I was doing, hooking up, as ever, on autopilot.

  I drove ten miles, waiting for the thrill of the unknown to hit me, my favourite part of spending my downtime on Grindr. But it didn’t come. I slowed down, taking the scenic route to the dude’s house, but something—everything—felt wrong. Don’t do it.

  Shame my subconscious didn’t want to tell me why I shouldn’t.

  Whatever. I wasn’t about hooking up when I didn’t really want to. I’d made that mistake before, and it never ended well.

  I bailed.

  I pulled into a lay-by and fired off the bad news. Then I muted the app and threw my phone in the glove box. Go home. But for reasons I couldn’t decipher, I didn’t. I sat and watched the traffic zoom by with no idea where I belonged. Agitation swept over me, as it often did when I hadn’t made sure to occupy myself. Billy had proved a welcome distraction from the noise in my head, but as I sat alone, he was part of the problem. I shouldn’t have left him. He hadn’t even wanted to go to Luke’s house. How was he going to feel when he realised I’d gone? Hurt? Angry? Or maybe he wouldn’t care. Maybe I was as insignificant to him as I’d always been and I was angsting myself into a coma for nothing.