Hard Glass

by Lina Langley

“Totally fine,” he said. “Not at all mortifying or anything.”

  I looked away from him. “So do you still have a crush on him?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, not at all.”

  “But you want to.”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Yeah, it would be easier, and I guess there’s a pull to that. But then there’s you, and I have no idea how or what could replace you.”

  “What do you mean?” I said quietly.

  “There’s nothing, Mason.” He said. “There’s nothing that could replace you now. Because I love you, and it hurts, and I thought it would be…”

  “What?”

  “Fun,” he replied.

  I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry I’m not fun.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “It’s not you that’s the problem.”

  He got close to me, kissing me softly on the cheek. I could feel myself become a puddle of nothingness at his lips on my cheek. “Then what is the problem?”

  “Well,” he said, smiling at me. “Clearly, everything else.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  JULES

  I pulled away from him after that. I wanted to, even though it hurt me. Even though every time I saw him, my heart would flip in my chest and I would feel like being sick all over myself. Hashim said no after I asked him out, though he was very kind about it, but it helped me. It helped me realize I shouldn’t have craved Mason so much.

  I wanted Mason. I needed him, as much as I needed water. As much as I needed food every day. But I stopped hanging out with him, at least one and one, because I couldn’t bear it. He was so close to me, I wanted to take him by the hand and kiss him, among many other dirty things. I didn’t know how many times I had woken up with an erection, thinking about that night near the lake. I could still feel the way he tasted on my tongue and I craved it frequently, especially when he would sit across me and I would think about dropping down to my knees, putting his cock in my mouth again. I loved the way he tasted, like salt and himself, and I hated knowing that I would probably never get to taste him again.

  That I would never kiss him, even though I wanted him more than I had ever wanted anything or anyone else. But I kept my distance and he got new friends, probably to protect himself, and maybe even to protect me.

  It wasn’t until January, when my mom was due to give birth, that I noticed that something was going on with Mason. He wasn’t always particularly beat, but he seemed sadder than usual and I couldn’t help myself.

  I needed to ask him. Even if we weren’t supposed to be friends, we were technically brothers. So it was better that he talk to me. I needed him to talk to me, because I hated seeing him like that.

  I waited until Brandon was out and knocked on his door.

  “Come in,” he said.

  I opened it, just a little, so he could see who it was. His expressions softened when it landed on my face. “Jules,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m… I was wondering if you had a minute to talk,” I said.

  He nodded. There was a notebook on his bed, right next to him, and a bunch of books surrounding his body. “Of course, come on in.”

  I walked into his bedroom and sat down at the bottom of the bed.

  “I thought everyone was out for Saturday night,” he said. “Brandon said he had invited you to the movies.”

  “Yeah. What about you?”

  He shook his head. “Wait, he said something about your birthday.”

  “That’s next week,” I said. “And you’re definitely coming out for that.”

  He smiled weakly at me, but waved me off. “He invited me too, but I have an exam on Monday I need to study for,” he said. “I can’t fucking parse 1984. Every other book, I’ve gotten it. I just don’t get this one.”

  “What don’t you get about this one?”

  “It’s just so confusing,” he replied. “Like, Winston goes to look for the limitations of this system, right? But he’s happy before then. He’s clothed and fed and…”

  “No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Winston is never happy.”

  When he looked up at me, I saw that there tears welling up in his eyes. “Right,” he said. “But if he hadn’t looked, if everything had just stayed the same, then it would have been okay.”

  “Not… not okay,” I replied, walking over to where he was and sitting down on the bed next to him. “Just the same way as things were before.”

  He looked at me, then shook his head and sniffled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m being a baby.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to guess this isn’t about George Orwell.”

  “It is. It isn’t,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess I thought that I would find you, and find my mom, and then everything would be different.”

  I swallowed, putting my hand on his shoulder. I hated seeing him this upset. “Everything is different,” I said.

  “Right, no better. In fact, it’s probably worse,” he said. “Maybe I’m feeling this way because my birth mom wasn’t doesn’t want me and I’m in love with my twin brother. You know. Just your standard things that fuck with your head.”

  I shook my head. “I want to confront my mom,” I said. “Every time I see her, I think about how she could’ve kept the secret. I don’t understand why she did it, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I want to, I want answers. I think I need them, but…”

  “But what?” he asked me.

  I took a deep breath. “Honestly? I think it might be better if we just pretend it’s not a thing.”

  “Doesn’t that lead to other issues?”

  I chuckled, shaking his head. “I already have a lot of issues with my mother. I don’t think a couple of more are going to break our relationship.”

  He looked away from me, his eyes still full of tears. When he blinked, the tears began to slide down his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that this is me being ridiculous.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m just really stressed out right now. I feel very angry, and I don’t think it’s your fault. You don’t have anything to do with this, except for the fact that you’re there, and your presence makes it all so much more complicated,” he said.

  I scooted just a little closer to him. “What are you angry about?”

  He looked at me and grimaced. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I really want to know.”

  He looked down, shook his head, and took a deep breath before he spoke. “Okay, then. I don’t want you to feel bad, Jules, but I always get like this a few weeks before my birthday.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Isn’t your birthday—”

  “No,” he replied, looking up at me. “So you know how my last name is Payne?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well, that’s because of the firefighter who found me. My birthday is celebrated on the day a bunch of firemen found a basket with a baby in it,” I said. “And now that I’ve actually met my birth family, it all feels sort of… insulting.”

  I swallowed, a lump in my throat. I had never thought about his birthday. I had never even considered it, and I felt like a fool for not thinking it through. “I’m sorry,” I said, stroking his arm with the back of my fingers. “I shouldn’t… I didn’t know.”

  He shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “Nobody really knows that story. I just… it’s hard for me, that’s all.”

  I took his hand. “I feel like such an idiot,” I said.

  “It’s okay, Jules,” he said, shaking his head and sniffling. “It’s not your fault nobody wants me.”

  “That’s not—that’s not true,” I said, surprised by how cutting his words were. “Your foster parents love you.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And I want you,” I said. “I want you move than anything else.”

  He shook his head again, but I couldn’t resist. I moved his face so he was facing me and kissed h
im on the lips, caring very little about the fact that he was my twin. All I cared about was that I loved him and that I was going to show him exactly how I felt about him.

  He moved away from me, looking down at my lips, then put his forehead on mine. “Jules,” he said. “We can’t—we can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we can’t, okay?”

  I hooked my finger around his chin and tilted his head up so we were looking right at each, then kissed him on the lips again, but this time he jerked away. “Fuck off, Jules,” he said. “You can’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “This! You just… you just use me,” he said, his voice shaking. “You are going to go back to having a perfectly normal life, to having your friends, to having your… your new baby brother or sister, while I’m left with nothing. Except, you know, you also get to fuck me, too, and isn’t that just the greatest?”

  “That’s not fair,” I said, my voice shaking too. “That wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “Well, that’s what you did back at your house,” he said. “You made it very clear that I’m disposable.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I don’t care how you meant it. I understood it and you don’t have to say it again,” he said, his expression darkening. Then he cleared his throat. “Now, please. Get out of my room. I need to study.”

  “Mason—”

  “Get out,” he said, his eyes ablaze. “Get the fuck out of my room, Jules.”

  “Mason, please—”

  “And don’t come back,” he said. “Don’t come back and pretend to be my friend, because I know that you aren’t.”

  “Mason—”

  “Out! Get the fuck out!” he said, screaming it so loudly that someone could have heard him. “Just stay away from me, okay?”

  I nodded, saying nothing and backing away from him. I could see the tears in his eyes, and I could feel the hot tears welling up in mine.

  I walked back to my dorm, wondering what the fuck had happened, not feeling any better at all as I opened the door to my room and closed it softly behind me.

  Whatever that was, it had made things worse. And I didn’t have any idea how to fix them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MASON

  I hadn’t meant to push him away. It had sort of just happened when he had found me in the middle of a break-down and I was glad. It made going to court easier. I was happier that they weren’t there, because having Hashim, Brandon and Jules to worry about would have made my life a lot harder.

  It wasn’t like a trial. I was mostly there just to see how it was going to go, and in case the judge called on me, which, according to Denise and Clive, wasn’t very likely to happen at all.

  I had to be there to see the outcome. Well, technically, I didn’t have to, but I wanted to be. It was a Tuesday and Clive went by to pick me up early in the morning. He even asked me if I wanted to drive, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  I didn’t realize just how worried I was about seeing Dill until we began to approach the city. Clive slowed down once we got to the city and looked at me, concern obvious on his face. “We can go get food instead, bud. Denise was upset she couldn’t get the day off work, but she said she would feel better if we had fun,” he said. “We have all day.”

  “No,” I replied, smiling a little. Denise and I had spoken on the phone the night before and she had been sweet and encouraging. I couldn’t wait to see her. “No, we—no.”

  He nodded. “You need to do this, huh?”

  I looked away from him, at the buildings we were driving by. “He was going to hurt them, Clive,” I said. “And I know I shouldn’t have hit him, but I—”

  He nodded. “You’re old enough to know that sometimes you need to get physical with people,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to. But you might and I’m proud of you.”

  I looked at him and smiled, feeling a little teary-eyed. “Seriously?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Remember where you were a few months ago? Wanting to get emancipated from the state, needing what amounted to a full-time job.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

  “Mason,” he said after a little while. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  I looked at him. “Sure,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Will you consider not getting emancipated?” he said. “We’ve been thinking about adopting you. You know, if you want us too.”

  I swallowed, staring. “You want to adopt me? I’m almost eighteen.”

  “I know,” he replied. “So young. You need a family, Mason. You need parents.”

  I cleared my throat. It took me a little time to process what he was saying. I had always been so sure I was just going to age out of the system, that I would never find anyone who wanted to adopt me, that the fact that I was never going to find a forever family was just a given for me. Especially after my bio-mom’s rejection. It made it so much easier to think that there was simply no hope for me.

  I liked Clive and Denise. I loved them. I just had no idea why they would want to adopt me. “You want to adopt me,” I said again, more to myself than to him.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re our son, Mason. We just want to make it legal.”

  “Clive…”

  “Think about it,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  There was a heavy silence between us. “Okay, well—”

  “No,” I said, trying to choke back tears. “No, I meant, there’s nothing to think about. I would love it if you adopted me.”

  He smiled at me, his dark eyes shining. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  I smiled back at him, but saw the courthouse from the corner of my eye and my breath caught in my throat. “It’s okay,” he said. “Whatever happens, I’m here.”

  I took a deep breath. He pulled into the parking lot, saying nothing as we drove around and attempted to find a parking spot. The place was jampacked and I was worried that we weren’t going to be able to a spot in time. He finally found on the side of the building, very far away from the stairs leading up to the gate.

  There was a moment right before he killed the ignition. He looked at me again, raising his eyebrows. “You can still back out.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t want to back out.”

  He nodded. “Then,” he said. “You might want to get ready for disappointment.”

  I quietly laughed. “Yeah, don’t worry,” I replied. “I know exactly what to expect.”

  He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  Even though I thought I knew what to expect, I was still hoping for a different result. Dill and his wife might not have been in the system anymore after the beating, but that felt like a slap on the wrist. I knew lots of foster parents got away with worse things, but the fact that they had almost hurt my foster sisters still made my insides burn with anger.

  I hadn’t heard from them and I assumed that was the way the system wanted to keep it. When I had asked Kelly about, she had always dismissed me, but she had been reassuring. She had told me they were safe and with a loving family.

  It seemed possible. If it had happened to me when I was about to age out of the system, maybe it would happen to them too. I couldn’t be sure, but Denise and Clive had given me some hope. I was thinking about that, wondering if I could get Kelly to give them my number, when I picked up my head to look ahead and had to bite down on my tongue to stop myself from gasping.

  Clive was looking at me, saying nothing.

  “It’s him,” I said, nodding toward Dill. He wasn’t shackled. In fact, he looked far more presentable than I’d ever seen him as he went up the stairs, hand-in-hand with Brittany.

  I felt sick. Dill stopped, just for a second, and turned to look at me. He must have seen me from the corner of his eye. His face was too far away, but I could feel his grin e
ven if I couldn’t see it, and it got under my skin.

  “He’s not in jail,” I said.

  “He’s probably out on bail,” Clive replied. “Today is the sentencing. He’s already been arraigned and…”

  He was lagging behind me because I was walking so fast. I stopped hearing his voice as I broke into a run, hardly aware that I was doing it. I could feel the wind on my face, the ground, soft and unsteady under me, and I could hear Clive’s alarmed voice. He wasn’t quite screaming at me, but it was clear that he wasn’t pleased.

  I didn’t care. I couldn’t make out what he was saying and I wanted to confront Dill face-to-face, since the court could clearly not do their job for shit. But before I was even half way there, my breath caught in my throat as I realized the enormity of what was happening before me.

  At the bottom of the stairs but quickly closing in on Dill, there was a far too recognizable silhouette. Jules was going up the stairs, wearing a white polo shirt with tri-colored stripes on the chest and pale pink shorts that went down to just above his knees. But even from just his profile, I could see the resemblance, and I was sure that Dill was going to be able to see it soon too.

  Jules was walking too fast. Dill and Brittany were going at a leisurely pace, as if they were on the beach for a leisurely stroke. I didn’t want to know what awaited Jules if he made the mistake of passing by Dill.

  I sped up, as much as I could. I was still considerably far away from the stairs and they were about to bump into each other. Clive had stopped shouting for me, but I could hear his footsteps coming from behind me. I felt bad about making him run, but I could apologize later.

  The most important thing was making sure that nothing happened to Jules.

  I was so close to the steps when I saw Dill turn around. I could see his face now quite well and his expression was clear. The flash of anger in his face was unmistakable.

  He was towering over Jules. He was much taller than him, but he was also a step above him, and he could have easily pushed him down the stairs if he wanted to. Jules looked up at him. I was moving, so I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it looked as if Jules was apologizing to him.

  Dill didn’t budge.