“I’m going to make a statement to the press.” He can’t look at me. He just stares up at the fluorescent lights hung across the gym ceiling.
Still, it jolts me back. “About the rumors…” I trail off. I didn’t expect him to make a statement about the molestation rumors, not even after we cleared the air in Utah. I could see that he had made a promise to himself, to never protect our father again, and I didn’t want to force him to break it. “You don’t have to—”
“I do,” he says, nodding. “I should’ve done it months ago. The hardest things in life are usually the right things. I just hated Dad too much to do the right thing.” He throws the towel on his gym bag. “When I clear his name of the allegations, I want you to know that it’s not for him, okay?” He turns to me. “I’m doing this for you, and for me.”
I pat his back, choked up for a second. I rub my lips as I process these feelings. It takes me a minute to finally say what’s been inside of me for years. “Thank you.”
Without my brother, I wouldn’t be sober. I’m not even sure I’d be alive. His decision to enter my life and never let go was one that saved me. No thank you will repay what he’s given me. But it’s all I have. And by the smile that begins to lighten his normally darkened face—something tells me that it’s enough for him.
67
2 years : 04 months
December
LILY CALLOWAY
I hug my chunky knit sweater tight around my body, the wind whipping my hair as I step outside. No vans parked on the street. No one snaps pictures of me. The gated neighborhood reminds me of our childhood, not all of it good, but the unease sits beneath these temperate feelings.
It’s a shelter from the media storm.
I pass a fir tree on the lawn, walking down the driveway towards the mailbox with quick steps. My cheeks rose in the cold, but nothing stops me from checking the mail every morning. I open the lid with giddy anticipation, and I spot the long tube and my excitement explodes into fireworks.
I pull it out like it’s a dream.
“You did it, Lil,” Lo says, heading down the driveway with a cardboard box labeled Christmas. One of my puffy winter jackets rests on top of it. He sets the box down and joins me.
“I can’t believe that I didn’t even cheat,” I say, waving the tube around like a lightsaber. “Towards the end, at least.” Although Connor caught me scribbling a cheat sheet on my water bottle label my very last semester. He gave me a lecture about not needing a crutch, and I tossed the bottle away before the exam. Without his tutoring skills and ethics, I would’ve never made it this far.
“Open it,” Lo smiles.
I pop the lid off the tube and delicately remove the thin paper that contains my certificate.
“Now you’re an official college graduate, Lily Calloway. How does it feel?” he asks, pride overtaking his features.
“Good,” I say. Really, really good. It took me a long time to graduate from Princeton, especially after transferring there. I passed with a very low GPA, but I passed. That’s all that matters to me. I look up at him. “But it’s not as good as other accomplishments.” Going through recovery, taking the steps to be a better me, that achievement surpasses all others.
He tugs my Wampa cap on my head, pulling the flaps over my ears for warmth. “Are you too good to hang out with me now?” he asks, propping an arm on the mailbox.
I lose myself to his amber eyes for a moment, and then I say, “We’re the same.”
His lips slowly rise, dimpling his cheeks. He nods to the box, telling me to follow him up the driveway. “I got us out of furniture shopping with Connor and Rose.” He collects my puffy winter jacket and helps me put it on through each arm.
“How’d you do that?” I ask, watching him lift the cardboard box, the handwriting looks childish. Like…one of ours when we were little.
“We have to decorate that tree.” He nods to the big ass Christmas tree in the middle of the yard. I told Rose it was going to look weird off season, but she shooed me and said that this was the house. She stood outside of it, hands on hips, like she once did with our sisterhood house. The Princeton one where our boyfriends subsequently joined us.
“Good thinking,” I tell him. I’d much rather decorate a tree than spend hours listening to Rose and Connor digress from furniture to Faulkner to Shakespeare and scientific things that hurt my head.
“Want a ride?” he asks me, bending down. I jump on his back a little haphazardly, Wampa almost flying off.
“Careful, Lil,” he tells me. He has to hold onto the box, but I have no trouble wrapping my legs around his waist and holding onto his biceps like a monkey. “Can you feel it?” he asks on the short trek to the tree. I feel him roll his eyes. “Not it but I mean him or her or whatever.”
It’s weird for me too. “Not really, not yet at least.” The bump on my belly is a little bigger but not by much. He sets me on my feet, the giant brick and stone house looming behind us. Eight rooms. Even more bathrooms.
It reminds me, every day, that we can afford our mistakes. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why we end up making more.
He squats and opens the flaps of the box. “So I was thinking,” he says, while I try to peer into it. “If we have a boy, I know what we should name him.”
My lips part a little in surprise. “You’ve been thinking about names?”
“I mean, yeah,” he says. His brows crinkle as he looks back at me. “Haven’t you?”
“Once, maybe twice.” I haven’t let myself revel in the good parts of being pregnant. But now that Lo has, I think I can begin to.
He rises from the box, holding a bundle of ornaments, plastic toy action figures with strings on their heads. From our childhood. We used to play with them during the holidays, plucking them off the Hale family Christmas tree in the den.
My heart speeds as he sorts through the collection in his hand and picks out a certain one. He passes it to me, the blue paint chipped on the X-Men’s costume. This was his favorite superhero when we were little. Not Hellion, who appeared in comics in our adolescence. And not Scott Summers, who slowly grew into a man that he admired.
In the beginning of everything, he empathized most with Quicksilver. For being the son of an undesirable man. For being rebellious and wishing that life would just hurry up already. He’s not perfect by any means, but that’s why Lo loves him: every imperfection, every flaw. He is a hero in my eyes because of each one.
“Maximoff,” he says. My tears brim. I flip the ornament over and see Lo’s name etched into the back. He draws me closer and rubs his sleeve below my eyes. “Say something.”
“I love it,” I say with a laugh the produces more tears. Maximoff. Quicksilver’s last name. And then it clicks. “Remember when we said that the best Ravenclaws are the ones who can cheer for the Gryffindors and the Hufflepuffs?”
Lo nods.
“Luna,” I say. “For a girl…”
He smiles. “It’s perfect…just don’t tell Rose and Connor that it’s because of them.” He knows that Luna makes me think of my sister and his best friend. “It’ll go to their heads.” Very true.
If we have a girl, the origin of her name is a secret that stays between us.
I stare back at the ornament in my hand. “This isn’t pretend anymore, is it?” We spent three years playing house together before we became an official couple. Lines between our relationship and our worlds have always blurred. Like one foot in an alternate reality and one in Earth-616.