Page 13 of Playing Hard to Get

My brother was across the room, hovering over the keyboard at his glass-topped desk, the light of three computer monitors shining at him. Vinny flicked his eyes in my direction as his fingers came down quickly on the keyboard. In a split second, the screens went black. His eyes were wide before a slow smile spread across his lips.

“Viv! When’d you get home?” He was out of his chair and had his arms wrapped around me before I could make it past the center of the room.

My hug was fierce, hard, as my old guilt raced through me. As I felt the narrow slope of his shoulders, the way his shoulder blades stuck out like he hadn’t had enough to eat, the way the bones of his arms pressed through his muscles and into my back.

“Just last night.”

He pulled back and looked at me, studying my eyes. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I didn’t,” I said as I pulled free from him. I pushed past him, toward the wide window near his desk, and looked out onto the gardens below. The trees and bushes had yet to grow leaves, the flower beds sat empty and bleak. When I turned to Vinny, he was standing where I left him. Concern beat out of those bright blue eyes and it killed me. He had no reason to worry after me. Not after what I did to him.

“What’s wrong?”

My eyes shifted away from him as I shook my head, to the computer monitors blinking a slow slideshow across their screens. A picture of me, Vinny, and Daddy. Then one of Vinny and Frankie, cheesing it up with the bright green baseball field laid out behind them.

“Daddy freaked out when I came home unannounced.”

Vinny grimaced. He stepped over to a high-backed accent chair near one of his overflowing bookshelves and pulled it toward his desk. “Sit,” he said. “Talk.”

The monitors continued to flash as he took a seat in his desk chair. Pictures of Vinny with guys I’d never met. His friends, I assumed. Geeky and thin, with thick-rimmed, black glasses or strips of facial hair teasing a mustache off their lips. Then a guy with more muscles, attractive in an understated way. But he had nothing on my brother.

Vinny had our mother’s beauty. Blue eyes, blond hair, slight figure. A fairer version of me. Mother was a model who walked the runways in all the cities I frequented—Paris, Berlin, Milan, New York. She turned heads, made men pant with desire at the mere sight of her. Oh, the stories I heard when I was young. Always stories, though, because she was never there.

“I gotta get out of here, Vin.”

My brother chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “You just got home.”

“No, I mean I gotta get out of here.” I twisted off the cap of my water bottle, then twisted it right back on without taking a drink. “I can't take being around him anymore. You wanna know why I’ve been gone for so long? Because of him. He’s fucking in love with Corey. Only ever talks about Frankie.”

I opened my water again and sucked down a couple mouthfuls. Vinny watched me, that same misplaced worry in his eyes. I wanted to scrub it out, make him see he had no sense looking at me that way. Make him see me for who I was.

“I got in last night and I couldn't bring myself to come home.” My throat tightened and I swallowed hard. When I spoke again, it was just a whisper. “When’s he ever loved you like that, Vin?”

Vinny was next to me in seconds, his thin arms wrapped tight around my shoulders. “He loves us, Viv,” he assured me. “He just doesn't know how to show it.”

“I've never seen him look at you the way he looks at Corey. Like he’s God’s gift to the world. Like…” I couldn't say it, couldn't say what I was thinking. That Corey was like the son my father never had. One who was strong and tough, athletic. The baseball star. Everything my brother never was and could never be.

All because of me.

“Don't do this, Viv. You know he loves us both. He loves Frankie, and he loves Corey for saving her life. But he doesn't love you any less because of them.”

My breath left me in a huff. I wasn’t worried about Daddy loving me. I never had been. It was Vinny I worried about. Vinny who deserved the love he’d spent his life searching for. I didn't need love and probably wouldn't get it anyway. Didn't deserve it. But I couldn't bring myself to say that either. Vinny was my twin, my best friend. He was good where I was bad. He was light where I was dark. He deserved the world. Me?

Not so much.

“I gotta get out of here, Vin. I can't take him anymore. I need my own space where I can be, without the threat of him.”

Vinny pulled back and took my hands in his. “Maybe it’s time you got your own place. I know you’re not home much, so you don't need much, Viv. Just a place to lay your head when you’re home, a place to keep your stuff.”

Vinny chuckled and I was right there with him.

“Okay, maybe you need a little more space for your stuff. But you don't have to put it all there. I didn't.”

“What do you mean, you didn't?”

Vinny’s eyes twitched as a frown swept across his lips. He sucked in the corner of one lip, gnawing at it with his teeth.

I gasped. “You have your own place?”