AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I didn’t expect that answer.”
“So why’d you ask?”
Oliver laughed and I felt a tickle in my chest. My brother was so… He was incredible. So loyal. So self-made. When the knot in my throat started to overpower me, I forced myself to control those feelings. I could. Because he wasn’t Axel. He didn’t keep pulling, taking me to the limit; he left me the space I needed to keep from drowning.
We walked awhile through Byron Bay without talking and wound up at Miss Margarita, a cute little Mexican restaurant we used to go to with our parents sometimes. When I hesitated, Oliver took my hand.
“Come on, Leah. Axel’s probably got you starving to death with his vegetarian bullshit. Don’t tell me a taco with real meat in it doesn’t make your mouth water.”
We sat at an outside table. From there, at the end of a street with a few stores on it, we could see the blue of the sea.
We ordered tacos and burritos to share.
“Goddamn, this is worth every dollar,” my brother said, licking his lips after a bite. “You can’t imagine how bad the Mexican place by my work is. The first time, I almost asked them to give me my money back, but you know, I was new and I didn’t want to make a scene in front of everyone else.” He licked his fingers. “This sauce drives me wild.”
“Everything’s good out there?” I hadn’t asked him much about his job. Not because it didn’t interest me, but because I felt so guilty, so bad…knowing my brother was wasting his life, doing things he never wanted to do to take care of me…
“Yeah, of course, great.”
“Oliver, I know you.”
“Look, there are good days and bad days. It’s not like Byron Bay; nothing is, you know that.” He exhaled and passed me half his burrito. “There’s a girl, too, who complicates things.”
“What girl?”
“My boss. You want to hear something funny? I’ll tell you if you smile like you used to.”
I smiled in response because I couldn’t help it when I saw his eyes shining and him looking so relaxed, leaning into his chair.
“That’s what I’m talking about. You’re gorgeous when you smile, you know?”
“Don’t change the subject,” I said, a little uncomfortable.
“Fine. But don’t tell anyone.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“Family honor.”
“Family honor,” I responded, though I knew he was just going on about this to stretch out the conversation and hold my attention.
“The second night I spent in Sydney, I was still in a hotel, bored, feeling kind of shitty, and I decided to take a walk by myself. I wound up in a cocktail bar drinking. I’d been there twenty minutes when she came in. She was stunning. I asked her if I could buy her a drink and she said yes. We talked awhile, and we ended up…you know, back in my room.”
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a little girl.”
“Fine. I fucked her.”
I tried not to laugh.
“So just take a guess who I found the next morning when they told me to go to the office and meet the boss?”
“Are you serious?”
“Fuck yes. There she was.”
“So…?”
Oliver smiled and took a deep breath, as if he had just revealed something he’d had bottled up a long time. I saw the satisfaction in his eyes and realized that for a long time now I hadn’t been thinking about anything, I’d just been there, in the present, listening to my brother––an ordinary, everyday situation.
