Page 28 of Maybe (Mis-shapes #1)

“You…” Isaac gave me his annoyed face. Damned cute. “He’s not the fucking milkman, Ez!”

“Less useful. The milkman who comes up our road delivers eggs, too. And cream.”

I slipped through the gap in the door after him, before he had a chance to slam it in my face. “Honestly, Isaac, you can do so much better. If you won’t date me, then at least date someone who’ll suck your private parts, not your energy. Gerry has a face a dog wouldn’t lick.”

“Dating? You’re my goddamned brother! Who the fuck said anything about dating? And it’s Gerald, not Gerry, not Gerard, and no, he doesn’t!” Isaac threw the keys into a bowl and marched into the kitchen. “His face is perfectly acceptable.”

“For a warthog, yes.”

Isaac huffed. “Really, Ezra? Are we that superficial?”

Needless to say, I followed him, like I was being pulled by a string. “Deeply, deeply superficial, yes. That’s me.” I addressed his back. A pleading note sneaked into my voice. “I’m saying you’re too good for him. You’d be much better without him.” With me.

“I’m not with him!” With a gargled huff, he began pulling stuff out of the fridge, seemingly at random. “And I’ll never be with him now, will I? Not since my big scary brother frightened him off!”

He selected a different frustrated sound, then rounded on me. “Have you seen me, Ezra? The London gays are not exactly queuing up, are they?” He plucked at the front of his plain work shirt. “I look like a worn-out, hairy… baked potato.”

“I think you look great,” I said, stoutly. “More than, in fact.”

Yanking a saucepan from its hook, Isaac stomped over to the sink, blasting water into it. “You know how it is. Even on bloody Hinge they write gym-fit only . As if I’ve got time to go to the bloody gym!”

“I don’t either,” I pointed out.

“That’s because you don’t need to. A, because your main source of nutrition doesn’t come from a hospital vending machine and B, you weren’t graced with our father’s short man genes.”

I pounced. “Precisely! We don’t share the same genes! So kissing you is fine!”

“Oh no.” Isaac waggled a finger at me. “No, no, no. Don’t bring that up. That’s a whole bloody conversation I absolutely do not have the spoons to get into right now. Don’t even think it.”

Determined to keep my cool, I counted to ten.

We were still hovering around him kicking me out.

“At least promise me you’ll stop beating yourself up about not being perfect in everything you do, Isaac.

You’re a great doctor and a great human being.

So what if you can’t find the time to go to the bloody gym?

You can’t be everything to everybody. And get rid of bloody Hinge. You’re better than that, Isaac.”

“Easy for you to say. You haven’t ever needed to go on it to find a?—”

“To be fair, Isaac, you don’t know what I’ve needed. I’m sorted now. Doesn’t mean I’ve always been that way.”

Isaac glared at me unhappily “Whatever.”

I sighed. This was so not what I came for. As he reached out to switch on the hob, I caught his wrist. “Just… sit down for a minute. Please, Isaac. I came over to talk, not fall out with you.”

He flung me off. “I don’t want to sit down. I’m tired, and I’m hungry. I haven’t had a chance to eat anything except chocolate all day. I’ve had no fucking time.” He slammed the pan down on the gas ring, water slopping over the sides. “So I certainly didn’t bloody need this crap when I got home.”

My instinct to snap out a cutting rejoinder flared hot, like the flame of the stove.

To beat him back with something clever, then, having had the last catty word, flounce off.

But the person currently scattering dried pasta over the worktop, because his eyes were too blurry with angry and upset tears to see properly, was my precious Isaac.

And if the last few months had taught me anything, my heart was so much happier with this guy occupying a large corner of it than beating against a blank space.

“Listen. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about springing that kiss on you.” I scanned the ingredients he’d pulled from the fridge. “If it’s any consolation, it took me by surprise, too. Let me sort your dinner. How about I make a carbonara with that bacon? And we’ll use that lettuce for a salad.”

“I didn’t know you could cook.” As the fight left him and his shoulders sagged, he wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“I’ve got a bloody kid, babe. Of course I can.” Gently, I steered him to a chair. “Although chopping and frying bacon, then adding eggs and cheese, is hardly cordon bleu cookery. Do you want a beer, or something?”

“No.” He sounded utterly spent. “Water’s fine.”

It was a nice kitchen, bigger than mine and Carly’s combined.

Soulless, mind: none of Jonty’s and Freya’s artistic efforts pinned to the fridge, no lunchboxes and letters from school cluttering up the pristine work surfaces.

It could have belonged to anyone, because nothing of Isaac lived in it either, except for a pile of medical books on the refectory table.

As I pottered about, Isaac’s weary eyes followed me. “You lied to Gerald. To get rid of him. He’s a nice guy. I hope you weren’t too rude.”

“I did.” I poked the simmering pasta with a wooden spoon. “And I wasn’t. And I’m sure he’s delightful, but I’m not one of life’s sharers.”

Isaac sipped his water. He could make of that what he wanted; if he hadn’t cottoned on by now to how strong-minded I was to make him mine, he was a lost cause.

“I can’t lie about anything,” he observed. “My face goes red as a tomato. I look as guilty as if I’ve swindled a pensioner out of their life savings.”

“I know.” I smiled at him, and he smiled back, for the first time. “I remember when you broke the downstairs toilet window, swinging a golf club, and tried to tell Janice it must have been the cat.”

“Yeah.” He almost smiled again. “She made me pay for it out of my birthday money. And yet you totally got away with nicking that bottle of sherry from the cellar and blaming it on the poor builders next door.”

I chuckled. I’d forgotten that one. “Yes, well, my moral crumple zones are a little more… lax than yours.”

We ate in silence, mostly, though he told me about a couple of interesting patients he’d seen that day, and I informed him about the dress rehearsal for Jonty’s school play.

The highlight had been a kid whose Viking leggings were too baggy and fell down halfway through his sword fight. He laughed at that.

When we finished, I stacked the dishwasher whilst Isaac took a quick shower.

It felt natural, wiping down the worktops and hanging up the tea towel, like we’d slipped into these roles before.

And I suppose we had, once, after a fashion, though I don’t recall being so useful growing up.

More likely, I would have sent him downstairs to sneak us both a snack whilst I stayed out of the way up in my bedroom.

When the kitchen was tidy, I took my guitar to the sitting room and picked out a few of the chords of the new song.

“That’s nice,” Isaac said. “I like the refrain.”

“Cheers.”

Lost in my head, I hadn’t heard him come in.

His hair was damp, parted neat enough to ride a bike along, as usual.

He’d changed into loose jeans and a plain polo.

Dull, generic clothes, attached to an ordinary, solid body, but a little spill of pleasure worked its way down my spine, nonetheless.

Though pale and tense, he was perfect. Because under everything still lived the little boy who’d comforted me when my world fell apart, by saying nothing and handing me a crumpled hanky from the jacket pocket of his hideous school uniform.

He’d held my hand and, despite the agony of my grief, shown me sparks of something good to be found, even in the depths of my worst nightmare.

A boy who could turn my soul to catch the right light.

Nobody had come close to ever doing anything that special, or given me that much security, since.

“Is this the one about us?”

The skin of my cheeks pinked. “Maybe,” I grumped, and he smiled at our old joke.

“I haven’t really played the guitar since you left home,” Isaac volunteered. He sat on the sofa opposite with his legs tucked under him. “I don’t think I can remember a single chord now.”

“Why?” I asked. “No time?”

“Partly. And partly because playing it reminded me too much of you and that you weren’t around anymore.

I switch stations when the songs you used to sing and practice over and over come on the radio; I can’t bear listening to them.

Not just because they remind me you left.

They remind me of other things I don’t want to remember too. ”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I dunno.” He ran a hand through his damp hair.

“The bad times, I suppose? Like how we made ourselves scarce when Dad came home jetlagged from one of his trips and threw his weight around, making snide comments to my mum. Trying to provoke her into snapping. Criticising everything she said and did, just to get a rise from her. And how, because she wanted to keep him happy, she took it out on you.”

For goodness’ sake, Ezra, can’t you see your father’s had the devil of a journey? Switch off that bloody music. Put someone else first, for once .

I blew out a long breath. So Isaac felt it too.

The quiet dread settling deep in my bowels whenever our father’s key sounded in the lock and he dropped his bags in the hallway.

The dull thud of them hitting the tiles.

How, until we’d gauged his mood, we tiptoed around him on eggshells.

Because when a challenging operation went well, or when the chief minister of wherever sang his praises for gifting a pile of obsolete ECG machines to a deprived kid’s ward, we’d get a reprieve.

He’d produce something expensive and sparkly for Janice, picked up last minute at the airport, and they’d have an early night.

I said nothing as Isaac sadly shook his head.