Page 21 of Make Me Mean It

Good. I can stop spending half my days working out how to apologise to someone who apparently doesn’t need one.

Except my pen presses harder into the paper instead of moving.

Theo vaults over the back of the couch and drops beside me, the cushions dipping under him, tipping me slightly towards him before I catch myself and shift the other way.

Theo, naturally, takes that as an invitation to occupy every inch I’ve just given him, stretching out across half the couch with one arm sprawled over the cushions and a beer hanging loosely from his other hand.

“Don’t you get tired of being so boring?”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Sorry, I don’t enjoy acting like a brainless neanderthal.”

Theo hums, rolling his head against the back of the couch until he’s looking at me fully.

His hair is still damp from his shower, darker strands falling messily across his forehead, and this close I can see the shadows beneath his eyes that weren’t visible from across the room. He looks tired, enough that it should probably make him look worse, except somehow it only takes some of the usual sharpness out of his face.

His mouth starts to curve, the silver ring through his bottom lip catching the light.

Right.

I’m staring again.

“You know your brother’s one of those neanderthals, right?”

He tips his head towards the coffee table, and I follow his gaze.

Marcus is standing in the middle of it, swaying badly out of time with whatever song is playing, a bright grin stretched across his face while Lucas shouts encouragement from somewhere nearby.

The laugh gets as far as my throat before I manage to swallow it.

Marcus has always been able to do this. Walk into a room and belong there without thinking about it. He can be too loud, dance terribly on a coffee table and have everyone around him laughing with him instead of at him.

He never seems to wonder where to put his hands or whether he’s talking too much. Never seems to notice when a room gets too loud or too crowded or when there are too many people brushing against him.

He just exists.

I look down at my notebook, thumb running absently along the edge of the page.

Sometimes I wonder how we came from the same family.

“I tolerate everyone but you, Knox.” I flick Theo a glance from the corner of my eye. “And it has nothing to do with you being gay.”

His mouth ticks up, loosening the knot that’s been sitting beneath my ribs all week.

There’s that look again, the one that makes me think he understood a little more than I actually said.

Before I can decide whether that’s a problem, a hand lands on his shoulders and Theo disappears.

An embarrassingly startled noise tears out of him when Marcus yanks him clean off the couch, and I turn around just in time to see my brother haul him over his shoulder.

Theo somehow managing not to spill his beer.

“Put me down, jackass,” he huffs, laughing too hard for it to sound remotely threatening.

“Not a chance, Knox.”

Marcus spins in a circle, the room erupting into laughter.

I shake my head, but the smile wins this time, spreading while Theo curses and grabs desperately at his beer.